[TYPE THE COMPANY NAME]

Case Analysis II
Group Assignment
Mickey!!

2/3/2012

Gaurav Tikkas Gaurav Verma Priya Agarwal Dhruv Talwar Ankit Chaturvedi

"On the basis of information given in the class and discussion held, about the case of Suez canal shares, give your views as to how decisions by individuals can decide the future of nations and people, even within a democratic framework. Assuming that an organization can also be thought of as a state, explain how your views can relate to a corporation. To be born a leader is an expression that can suffer some debate. Leaders are not born but they emerge from situation. They gain experience, they absorb knowledge, and they see and listen to the world around them - both inside the organization and beyond. A leader must have a vision that should be at par with the organisation. Effective leaders envision what they want and how to get it. It is the leader who integrates the organisational activities to yield organisational goals. A leader must also be courageous and should have the perseverance to accomplish a goal, regardless of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles. He should maintain calmness under stress and should be farsighted. All these characteristic of a leader can be analysed in case of Benjamin Disraeli under Suez Canal Case. The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. The Suez Canal formed an important asset that the imperial British wanted to add to their basket because they had formed colonies in eastern Africa, India, and parts of Australia. The voyage from Europe to Asia was reduced from six months to 6 weeks. Also about seventy percent of the oil requirement was fulfilled from transportation through Suez Canal. In 1875, the Khedive of Egypt had gone bankrupt and needed to sell shares in the Suez Canal in order to gain money. Benjamin Disraeli understood the importance of Suez Canal and purchased 176,602 shares in the Canal in order to stop the imperial lifeline to India and Australia falling into French hands. Disraeli persuaded Lionel de Rothschild to lend the British government the 4m needed to purchase the shares. Since Parliament was not in session at the time, Disraeli took the instantaneous decision on his own, thereby opening himself to much criticism from Parliamentary opponents, but winning approval from the Queen and the public. Benjamin Disraeli was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure. Starting from comparatively humble origins, he served in government for three decades, twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. This incident highlighted some characteristics that Disraeli displayed as a leader. There are at times that leaders need to take decisions on their own for the betterment of the organisation and be responsible for the decision that he has taken. He must be fearless and courageous and should be ready to face the consequences of the decision. In this case also Disraeli was fearless and took the instant decision to acquire the shares of the Suez Canal. The parliament was not sitting at the time when the offer for the sale of shares canal came to him. But he was sure that the acquisition of the shares would definitely be of great advantage to the imperial British for trade and colonial purpose and so he conveyed the message to the queen. He was farsighted and hence instantly approached Lionel de Rothschild for the loan and not the Bank of England because he did not want the acquisition to be delayed. It was a selfless decision on his part and was entirely for the benefit of the country. Had the process been delayed the scenario might have been much different and French might have acquired the shares. Even then he had to bear the brunt of the opponents and the parliamentarians and was answerable to them. Hence Disraeli stood out as a great leader in this mess and added The Suez Canal to the basket of the imperial British.

History is full of examples where some extra-ordinary people changed the course of history by their decisions which in some cases were Right and in others 'not so right decisions' as in the case of Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln or Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler. Accordingly the outcomes were inspiring in the first case and catastrophic in the later. Their decisions significantly changed the history of their nations and left a permanent mark on the future of the citizens of that nation. Individuals who were activists, world leaders, scientists, or artists followed their convictions and focused their lifes work that eventually became a catalyst for events to unfold in history. In each case the decisions and the route that the individual followed ignited a change. But , one thing that stands out common to all these great men are the values and principles that they believed in. Values, such as courage in the face of great opposition or in striking out in a new direction; selflessness in helping others during a time of disaster; ingenuity in founding or building an institution; patriotism in time of national crisis; or leadership in a cooperative effort to protect human rights or improve the community. Decision Making is as much a matter of art as it is a science. Probably , that is why , it finds itself applicable in each and every field from technology to business and politics to practical life. Chester Barnard, a retired telephone executive and author of The Functions of the Executive, imported the term "decision making" from the lexicon of public administration into the business world. There it began to replace narrower descriptors such as "resource allocation" and "policy making." The introduction of that phrase changed how managers thought about what they did and spurred a new crispness of action and desire for conclusiveness. "Policy making could go on and on endlessly, and there are always resources to be allocated," he explains. "'Decision' implies the end of deliberation and the beginning of action." To make good choices, companies must be able to calculate and manage the attendant risks. Today, myriad sophisticated tools can help them do so. But it was only a few hundred years ago that the risk management tool kit consisted of faith, hope, and guesswork. That's because risk is a numbers game, and before the seventeenth century, humankind's understanding of numbers wasn't up to the task. During the Renaissance, scientists and mathematicians such as Girolamo Cardano mused about probability and concocted puzzles around games of chance. In 1494, a peripatetic Franciscan monk named Luca Pacioli proposed "the problem of Points"--which asks how one should divide the stakes in an incomplete game. Some 150 years later, French mathematicians Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat developed a way to determine the likelihood of each possible result of a simple game. But it wasn't until the next century, when Swiss scholar Daniel Bernoulli took up the study of random events, that the scientific basis for risk management took shape. Bernoulli focused not on events themselves but on the human beings who desire or fear certain

outcomes to a greater or lesser degree. His intent, he wrote, was to create mathematical tools that would allow anyone to "estimate his prospects from any risky undertaking in light of [his] specific financial circumstances." In other words, given the chance of a particular outcome, how much are you willing to bet? But it wasn't until after World War I that risk gained a significant importance in economic analysis. In 1921, Frank Knight distinguished between risk, when the probability of an outcome is possible to calculate and uncertainty, when the probability of an outcome is not possible to determine.Some two decades later, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern laid out the fundamentals of game theory, which deals in situations where people's decisions are influenced by the unknowable decisions of "live variables". Today, corporations try to know as much as is humanly and technologically possible, deploying such modern techniques as derivatives, scenario planning, business forecasting, and real options. But at a time when chaos so often triumphs over control, even centuries' worth of mathematical discoveries can do only so much. There is merit as well as nobility in the idea of people pooling their wisdom and containing their egos to make decisions that are acceptable and fair to all. During the last century, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and even biologists eagerly unlocked the secrets of effective cooperation within groups. Later, the popularity of high-performance teams, coupled with new collaborative technologies that made it "virtually" impossible for any man to be an island, fostered the collective ideal. A breakthrough in understanding group dynamics occurred just after World War II, sparked-oddly enough--by the U.S. government's wartime campaign to promote the consumption of organ meat. Subsequently, psychologist Kurt Lewin discovered that people were more likely to change their eating habits if they thrashed the subject out with others than if they simply listened to lectures about diet. His influential "field theory" stated that actions are determined, in part, by social context and that even group members with very different perspectives will act together to achieve a common goal. Over the next decades, knowledge about group dynamics and the care and feeding of teams evolved rapidly. Victor Vroom and Philip Yetton established the circumstances under which group decision making is appropriate. R. Meredith Belbin defined the components required for successful teams. Howard Raiffa explained how groups exploit "external help" in the form of mediators and facilitators. And Peter Drucker suggested that the most important decision may not be made by the team itself but rather by management about what kind of team to use. It seems that decisions reached through group dynamics require, above all, a dynamic group. As Clarence Darrow neatly put it:"To think is to differ."Thinking Machines COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS EULOGIZE XEROX PARC OF THE 1970S as a technological Eden where

some of today's indispensable tools sprouted. But comparable vitality and progress were evident two decades earlier at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. There, a group of distinguished researchers laid the conceptual--and in some cases the programming--foundation for computer-supported decision making. Future Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, Allen Newell, Harold Guetzkow, Richard M. Cyert, and James March were among the CIT scholars who shared a fascination with organizational behavior and the workings of the human brain. The philosopher's stone that alchemized their ideas was electronic computing.Over the next decades, managers in many industries applied the technology to decisions about investments, pricing, advertising, and logistics, among other functions. Unlike executives making strategic decisions, consumers don't have to factor what Herbert Simon called "zillions of calculations" into their choices. Still, their newfound ability to make the best possible buying decisions may amount to technology's most significant impact to date on corporate success or failure." But when Jack Welch describes his "straight from the gut" leadership style, he's not talking about the alimentary canal. Rather, Welch treats the word as a conflation of two slang terms: "gut" (meaning emotional response) and "guts"(meaning fortitude, nerve). We don't admire gut decision makers for the quality of their decisions so much as for their courage in making them. Gut decisions testify to the confidence of the decision maker, an in valuable trait in a leader. Gut decisions are made in moments of crisis when there is no time to weigh arguments and calculate the probability of every outcome. They are made in situations where there is no precedent and consequently little evidence. Sometimes they are made in defiance of the evidence, as when Howard Schultz bucked conventional wisdom about Americans' thirst for a $3 cup of coffee and Robert Lutz let his emotions guide Chrysler's $80 million investment in a $50,000 muscle car. Financier George Soros claims that back pains have alerted him to discontinuities in the stock market that have made him fortunes. Such decisions are the stuff of business legend. Decision makers have good reasons to prefer instinct. In a survey of executives that Jagdish Parikh conducted when he was a student at Harvard Business School, respondents said they used their intuitive skills as much as they used their analytical abilities, but they credited 80% of their successes to instinct. Henry Mintzberg explains that strategic thinking cries out for creativity and synthesis and thus is better suited to intuition than to analysis. And a gut is a personal, nontransferable attribute, which increases the value of a good one. Readers can parse every word that Welch and Lutz and Rudolph Giuliani write. But they cannot replicate the experiences, thought patterns, and personality traits that inform those leaders' distinctive choices. We further explore how leaders have changed the nation, their organizations and industry on the whole through their thought and actions

Leaders who transformed their Organizations Culture

In this section, we take a look at how some brilliant leaders were instrumental in changing the future of the organisations that they were in-charge of. They perfectly exemplify the saying, When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Though many a turn-around stories have been triggered by some courageous CEOs, we have decided to focus on two titans who deserve more plaudits than what they have got in recent times: Lou Gerstner and Howard Schultz. LOU GERSTNER When Lour Gerstner took over as its CEO in 1993, IBM had just announced a $8.1 billion loss; the largest in US history. He had 100 days of cash left and IBM was already being written off by commentators as a dinosaur and an also-ran. Not surprisingly, IBMs workforce was demoralized and hostile. Gerstners first task was to analyze the problem. Despite having good people, great technology and a sound strategy, he found that IBM was suffering from a success syndrome. Gerstner described IBM in the 1960s, 70s and 80s as the greatest commercial institution ever created. But instead of continuing to build on this legacy, it had become insular, inward-looking and rigid. Organizationally, it had become a decentralized fiefdom in which none of the business units communicated with each other. Gerstner realized that his overarching task was to lead a massive organizational and cultural change. Gerstner quickly found ways to stop bleeding cash and identified the companys principal growth engines. He wanted to break the assumption that customers would always buy IBM because of its past achievements. He then started to rebuild the company around the customer. To reintegrate the organization, he sought to provide total solutions to customers. To do so, he needed to transform almost every business process conducted by IBM. He cautioned his audience of star struck MBAs that managing a complete turnaround was not as glamorous as they might think. He quoted one of his senior managers who likened the implementation of the reengineering process to going to work every day and setting your hair alight and then putting it out with a hammer. Painful as the process was, it was successful. The business units had been reintegrated and Gerstner made $14 billion of cost savings. Gerstner said that he learnt three fundamental lessons from his time at IBM; the importance of: 1. Focus. Gerstner stressed the how imperative it was for a leader to love their business and to kill yourself to make it successful. There is no substitute for hard work and the desire to win. CEOs face a multitude of choices, often peddled by a multitude of self-interested advisors, but they need to focus on exploiting competitive advantages in core businesses. Accordingly, it is the CEOs responsibility to manage consultants, investment bankers and advertising agencies so to best serve their business rather than let them set the agenda.

2. Execution. Gerstner said that execution is what really separates business leaders. As an ex-McKinsey Director, Gerstner said that consultants dirty little secret was that it is not that difficult to come up with attractive strategies in public markets in which everyone has good information. The true differentiator was how you implement them. 3. Personal leadership. Gerstner said that despite the volumes of business books written on leadership recently, he still thought that this was the most undervalued element of institutional change. When asked later for his advice of how MBA graduates should behave to strive to emulate his success, Gerstner said that as a start you should always strive to do the job you are doing better than the guy before you. Finally, Gerstner wanted to discuss the importance and challenges of transforming corporate culture. For him, institutional culture is not what is said but it what is done. As an example of cultural change, Gerstner discussed abolishing IBMs notorious dress code. He said that at the time the public reception was as if he had sold the company to the Russians. But for Gerstner, it was common sense for IBMs salesmen to dress as their customers were doing. Gerstner said that changing the attitude and behaviour of thousands of people is hard to accomplish but key to success. The work environment is the crucible for individuals productivity. Management cannot change culture through words and policies alone. All leaders can do is create the conditions for transformation and invite employees to respond. Not surprisingly, he attributed IBMs success to the thousands of employees who were willing to react to his initiatives and work hard to make the elephant dance again. Howard Schultz It is hard to imagine that a few years ago Starbucks was in danger of going out of business. Howard Schultz bought the Seattle-based Starbucks Coffee Company in 1987 with the 11 stores he was working for. Years later after phenomenal growth, he gave up his executive leadership role only to return when Starbucks was headed for disaster. By 2010 the company had regained profitability, finished its best year ever with 16,000 stores in 54 countries run by 200,000 employees called partners. But Starbucks would not have recovered if Schultz had remained on the sidelines. Since the Starbucks crisis coincided with the 2008 recession it would have been easy to blame its decline on the negative financial climate. When money is scarce, why, some wondered, would people pay two dollars and more for coffee when they could pay much less at McDonalds or other of the competitors inspired by Starbucks? Schultz knew that even, or especially, during the recession people still wanted a good cup of coffee, but for some reason not at Starbucks. The big mistake he discovered was rapid expansion without quality control. In its rush to grow the Starbucks experience or its soul, was sacrificed. The recovery plan forced the closing of 600 stores. As Schultz tells it: We were closing 20 percent of our newest stores! We thought all we had to do was show up to be successful. As I stared at the list of 600, a lesson resonated: Success is not sustainable if its defined by how big you become. Large numbers that once captivated me40,000 stores!are not what matter. The

only number that matters is one. One cup. One customer. One partner. One experience at a time. We had to get back to what matters most.

In spite of criticism from employees and skepticism from shareholders and Wall Street, Schultz initiated top to bottom Transformation Agenda. He even shut down all Starbucks stored for a day of transformation training. While making changes with new products and technology, the Transformation Agenda returned Starbucks to an experience the aroma of robust coffee brewed by friendly baristas who know their return customers well enough to prepare their favorite coffee drink before being asked. Today, the Starbucks mission statement reads: to inspire and nurture the human spirit one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. Few would argue when we say, that Schultz has reignited the fire that was dying well before its time!

Leaders who led to change the destiny of their Countries

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall. - Che Guevara He started out as a barrister, was a victim of racist behavior, took the oath to free his land from foreign rule and finally defeated the queens rule. He went to a jail in South Africa and fought for the rights of the oppressed. He became the first black president in South Africa. Who would have thought that a victim of apartheid would eventually become a role model for billions? Once a decorated war veteran of World War I, he propagated the motive of the New Order, led an uprising against the Jews, locked horns with the establishment and went away scarred. The human history has been colored with anecdotes of many a heroes and anti heroes who have lined the paths for generations to follow. These individuals dared to think beyond the realm of the ordinary and in the process, changed the face of history during and after their lives. The common virtue among these personalities is that they always had a vision and never waivered in their path to achieve the same. Even though, in some cases, both the means and the ends were not justified but, nevertheless they tirelessly pursued their motives and affected the lives of other ordinary mortals. Here, we highlight the contributions made by a few illustrious political figures who have engrained their history in our collective consciousness.

Mohandas K Gandhi

also affectionately known as Mahatma led India's independence movement in the 1930s and 40s by strictly following the mantra of Ahimsa non violence. He faced the bullets and sticks of the British colonialists with stirring speeches and non-violent protest. More than anything else, historians say, Gandhi proved that one man has the power to take on an empire, using both ethics and intelligence. Other peaceful visionaries such as Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s civil rights movement and Tibet's Dalai Lama have emulated his methods in years to follow, shaking up the dynamics of world politics in the process. The Mahatma started out as a barrister in South Africa and practiced law for a period during which he also helped the alleviation of oppression of the lower strata of the society. On returning to India in 1915, he carried on his desire to improve the station of the lower classes. Gandhi quickly became a leader within the Indian National Congress, participated in the local struggles of various Indian communities. It was during those travels that his legend grew among the Indian community and the masses started following his path towards independence. When he was arrested several times over the following years for his actions during the movement, Gandhi calmly fasted in prison, believing that his death would embarrass the British enough to spur independence, which had become the focus of his politics by 1920. Gandhi's non-cooperation movement, kicked off in the early 1920s, called for Indians to boycott British goods and traditions and become self-reliant. His most famous protest came in 1930, when Gandhi led thousands of Indians on a 250-mile march to a coastal town to produce salt, on which the British had a monopoly. India finally gained full independence in 1947 after Gandhi stuck his foot in the door and uprooted the Queens rule with his mass uprising movements. This event played a significant role in inspiring others such as Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, Sarojini Naidu etc. and also laid a foundation for a scarred nation to rise up again and eventually become a force to be reckoned with.

In summary, the Mahatma taught us the value of conviction and perseverance which enables one to follow the successful path towards the goal.

The South African activist and former president Nelson Mandela (1918- ) helped bring an end to apartheid and has been a global advocate for human rights. A member of the African National Congress party beginning in the 1940s, he was a leader of both peaceful protests and armed resistance against the white minoritys oppressive regime in a racially divided South Africa. His actions landed him in prison for nearly three decades and made him the face of the anti-apartheid movement both within his country and internationally.

Released in 1990, he participated in the eradication of apartheid and in 1994 became the first black president of South Africa, forming a multiethnic government to oversee the countrys transition. Since retiring from politics in 1999, he has remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own nation and around the world. Since leaving office, Nelson Mandela has remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own country and around the world. He has established a number of organizations, including the influential Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Elders, an independent group of public figures committed to addressing global problems and easing human suffering. In 2002, Mandela became a vocal advocate of AIDS awareness and treatment programs in a culture where the epidemic had been cloaked in stigma and ignorance.

The primary lesson learnt from this visionarys life is that one should always think of inclusive development of the society and sacrifice ones comforts to serve the common purpose of humanity in a means possible.

Adolf Hitler

A much talked about anti hero throughout the post war era, propagated his political ideas which had originated in the rampant racism in his homeland, a form he had to accept with a pinch of salt when he was a young man in Vienna, trying unsuccessfully to enter an art school. He moved to Munich in 1913, where he enlisted in the German army. He was twice wounded, and decorated, during World War One. His political career began in 1918, fired by the hatred for the German revolution of 1918/19 and the Weimar Republic, which he regarded as symbolic of Germany's defeat in the war and of the illegitimate 'power of Jews and Bolsheviks'. In 1919 he joined the fascist German Workers' Party (DAP), whilst still employed by the German army. Demonstrating rare talent as a master-orator, he played to the crowds by stoking the resentments of right-wingers, promising extremist 'remedies' to Germany's problems, including the killing of Jews, which few believed would ever be enacted. By July 1921 he was the unquestioned leader of what had become the NSDAP, the Nazi Party. Using new techniques of mass-communication to project his own quirky charisma, and backed by the brutality of his storm troopers, he marched towards the west, the Soviets, democrats, communists, capitalists and Jews. At this time of rural economic depression, the 1929 crash, and mass unemployment, voters were in the right frame of mind to move his way, and by 1932 the Nazis could no longer be ignored by Germany's political elites. Although his party never won an overall majority in Germany, on 30 January 1933 Hitler became chancellor of a coalition government. By 1938 radicalism, terror, expansionism had become the norm, and many Germans tolerated the situation - with fear and propaganda being partial explanations for this acceptance. Hitler sought world domination (he always took war to his enemies, not they to him), and his policies led inexorably to World War Two. His murderous racial and political intentions were

always clear, although secrecy sometimes shrouded the precise means of their execution. He killed himself in Berlin in 1945, when it became clear that the war was about to end in victory for the Allied Forces. Even in his fall and eventual demise, he taught us a few important lessons - Never waiver from ones belief but let not irrationality take over. - Do not let the fear of the competition get to the psyche and confidence will surely follow.

In conclusion, the lives of these leaders have taught us a few valuable lessons in leadership and how one can direct masses and nations with unshaken self belief in all their endeavors. One can certainly apply all these in the daily life both personal and professional to good effect. The most important fact to be remembered is that one should always listen to others suggestions but follow ones own rationale.

Leaders who were flag bearers of change in the industry

You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
Steve Jobs

The death of Steve Jobs reminds us of the stark times we live in. As the world wept, shedding genuine tears for a change, at the passing of one of historys most remarkable inventorentrepreneurs, it seemed that we had entered an era of the end of the role model. He had inspired a generation to reach for the starry heights of accomplishment. More than that, he reminded the world of the gift of life, its limited span and the importance of the personal dream. In his now historic 2005 Stanford University Commencement speech, Jobs had revealed the savant in himself by declaring that Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Lifes change agent. In that speech, he had briefly described his fairy tale life, starting with how he had been put up for adoption by his biological mother, who was then a young, unwed college graduate student. Mr. Jobs, who was raised by working class parents, did not graduate from college. But he continued to learn. He listened to intuition. He is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in more than 230 awarded patents or patent applications. Talent must be allowed to speak and experiment with ideas, even if every move is not bound for immediate commercial success. Mr. Jobs has a timeless message for everyone the only way to do great work is to love what one does. A second powerful message from the 56-year old tech wizard is to learn from failure Steve Jobs was revered not for being one of the worlds most successful businessmen but for his seminal inventions, like the Mac and the iPad; his life story, worldview and later his terminal cancer had further elevated him to a cult figure. It was Steve Jobs' obsession with perfection and minimalism that brought products like the original iPod, a music player which could store 1,000 songs in a palm-sized device, the iPod Nano that he pulled out of his pocket six years ago or the first-gen MacBook Air that he pulled out of a manila envelope. Steve Jobs' focus was clear he wanted to create products that were innovative, path-breaking and above all, intuitive. For Steve Jobs making money was not the primary aim; it was doing things differently and creating products that no one had imagined could exist. Steve Jobs had no time or inclinations to construct such Towers of Babel; till the very end he continued to live in an ordinary middle class neighborhood, the kind where kids turn up for trick or treat. When it was known he was dying, Apple executives had to inform the local police to ensure that his open house did not get mobbed.

If anything really inspired him it was the Beatles. In a famous interview to the popular TV programme 60 Minutes, he said that his business model was the Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Ideas like this helped him build hugely successful corporate structures: Apple (named after Apple Records of Beatles fame), NeXT Computer and Pixar, the animation studio. Nevertheless, there was always an other-worldly side to Steve Jobs; he lived a simple, almost mythical life and became a veritable carpenter in the world of hi-technology. People all over the world, especially the young, liked what they saw in Steve Jobs. Here was a college dropout, a videogame freak and one time hippie who had no problems about admitting he had tripped on acid. New York Times reporter John Markoff, in his 2005 book What the Door mouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer quoted Jobs as saying, Doing LSD was one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life. Jobs, in contrast, had both charisma and the capacity to inspire, even though he was by no means a saint or a typical nice guy. Many had complained of his wild temperament and ruthlessness. He had even tried to disown his first daughter born out of a liaison with painter Chrisann Brennan. Steve Jobs also did not believe in charity and is said to have personally shut down all corporate philanthropy programs in Apple. He was a huge egoist who believed that his inventions were his real gifts to the world. And perhaps he was right. Mankind will never be the same now that it has the PC, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and finally a legend to fit all of that.

Jeff Bezos

From an early age, Jeffrey displayed a striking mechanical aptitude. Even as a toddler, he asserted himself by dismantling his crib with a screwdriver. He also developed intense and varied scientific interests, rigging an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room and converting his parents' garage into a laboratory for his science projects. When he was a teenager, the family moved to Miami, Florida. In high school in Miami, Jeffrey first fell in love with computers. An outstanding student, he was valedictorian of his class. He entered Princeton University planning to study physics, but soon returned to his love of computers, and graduated with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. After graduation, Jeff Bezos found employment on Wall Street, where computer science was increasingly in demand to study market trends. His went to work at Fitel, a start-up company that was building a network to conduct international trade. Over the years, Internet was adopted by government and academic researchers to exchange data and messages, but as late as 1994, there was still no Internet commerce to speak of. One day that spring, Jeffrey Bezos observed that Internet usage was increasing by 2,300 percent a year. He

saw an opportunity for a new sphere of business, and immediately began considering the possibilities. In typically methodical fashion, Bezos reviewed the top 20 mail order businesses, and asked himself which could be conducted more efficiently over the Internet than by traditional means. Books were the commodity for which no comprehensive mail order catalogue existed, because any such catalogue would be too big to mail -- perfect for the Internet, which could share a vast database with a virtually limitless number of people. He flew to Los Angeles the very next day to attend the American Booksellers' Convention and learn everything he could about the book business. He found that the major book wholesalers had already compiled electronic lists of their inventory. All that was needed was a single location on the Internet, where the book-buying public could search the available stock and place orders directly. Bezos's employers weren't prepared to proceed with such a venture, and Bezos knew the only way to seize the opportunity was to go into business for himself. It would mean sacrificing a secure position in New York, but he and his wife, Mackenzie, decided to make the leap. Jeff and Mackenize flew to Texas to make the drive to Seattle, where they would have ready access to the book wholesaler Ingram, and to the pool of computer talent Jeff would need for his enterprise. Mackenzie drove while Jeff typed a business plan. The company would be called Amazon, for the seemingly endless South American river with its numberless branches. On July 16, 1995, Bezos opened his site to the world, and told his 300 beta testers to spread the word. In 30 days, with no press, Amazon had sold books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries. By September, it had sales of $20,000 a week. Bezos and his team continued improving the site, introducing such unheard-of features as one-click shopping, customer reviews, and e-mail order verification. The business grew faster than Bezos or anyone else had ever imagined. When the company went public in 1997, skeptics wondered if an Internet-based start-up bookseller could maintain its position once traditional retail heavyweights like Barnes and Noble or Borders entered the Internet picture. Two years later, the market value of shares in Amazon was greater than that of its two biggest retail competitors combined, and Borders was striking a deal for Amazon to handle its Internet traffic. Today, Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie live north of Seattle, and are increasingly concerned with philanthropic activities. "Giving away money takes as much attention as building a successful company," he has said. The success of Amazon has also allowed Bezos to explore a lifelong interest in space travel. In 2004, he founded an aerospace company, Blue Origin, to develop new technology for spaceflight. Blue Origin has received funding from NASA and is testing New Shepard, a multi-passenger rocket-propelled vehicle designed to travel to and from suborbital space at competitive prices. In 2007, Amazon introduced a handheld electronic reading device called the Kindle. The device uses "E Ink" technology to render text in a printlike appearance, without the eyestrain associated with television and computer screens.

With the introduction of the Kindle, Amazon quickly captured 95 percent of the U.S. market for books in electronic form -- e-books. Hence showing that yet again Jeff continues to bend the rules of an industry which does not see innovations every day.
Sam Walton

n 1945, after leaving the military, Walton took over management of his first variety store at the age of 26. With the help of a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law, plus $5,000 he had saved from his time in the Army, Walton purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas. [4] The store was a franchise of the Butler Brothers chain. It was here that Walton pioneered many concepts that would prove to be crucial to his success. Walton made sure the shelves were consistently stocked with a wide range of goods. His second store, the tiny "Eagle" department store, was down the street from his first Ben Franklin and next door to its main (Newport) competitor. Walton leased the space mainly to preempt his competitor from expanding. It held its own, but didn't fare as wel Sam Walton wanted to focus on providing a wide range of goods at discounted prices to the consumer and keep his stores open longer than his competitors, even during the Christmas season. His lower-priced strategies allowed him to drive up sales and negotiate lower prices on purchases with his wholesalers. A combination of his location and price strategies made him a top seller in the chain in the six-state region of the franchise market. Higher rent and unfair lease negotiations eventually forced Sam Walton to open his own store in Bentonville, Arkansas called "Walton's Five and Dime" and sell off his inventory and franchise location to the location's owner, instead. In Bentonville, Walton continued to provide low prices and long hours while subsequently participating in community activities such as the Rotary Club and Chamber of Commerce. He continued to open new stores and offered the managers to become involved in the business from an investment perspective. By 1962 Walton and his brother Bud owned a total of sixteen stores in Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas, most of which still functioned under the brand of Ben Franklin. He preached three values of Leadership 1. Stick to fundamental values Sam Walton had simple values that guided him through his life and business. He didnt follow the latest management fad, nor did he believe in any of the get-rich-quick ideas. He was solidly living his life by the values that he grew up with. Similarly, as a leader building a team or an organization, you need to get away from all the noise about the latest management framework, or the next idea about how leadership should be done.

The principles that existed for thousands of years still exist today and all you have to do is follow them, and people will follow you. There is nothing new under the sun and you shouldnt be swayed by different ways and ideas; but stick to your values and you will be successful. 2. Dont follow the money, follow your passion Sam Walton didnt start off his variety stores with an ambition to become rich; he simply had a passion for his craft and at each point in time, he only wanted to do it better and better. The thing is, if you follow the money, youll be running from one business opportunity to another, without any focus. But Sam Walton had one focus: retail and so should you. When you follow your passion, youll be successful, in whatever craft you do, and youll become a leader in that field, no matter what is it. 3. Take care of your people Sam Walton took extremely good care of his employees and he gave very employee a chance to become successful with him by allowing them to purchase stock options of Wal-mart at a discount. He treated them as associates of the business and wanted them to enjoy part of Walmarts success. If you can value every single employee or team member in your organization, it will help toward your personal success as well. But do it only because you genuinely care. Make them part of the organization by allowing them to share the organizations success, be it by stock options or other forms of rewards. Theres a saying that goes, if you can make people around you successful, then you will be successful too.