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(More customer reviews)Innovation, innovation, innovation! This is the theme that shines like a beacon of light through "Companies that Changed the World", Jonathan Mantle's spirited romp through four hundred years of Western (and later Eastern) capitalism. The 50 Companies that are profiled in this slim volume -- starting with the Honourable East India Company in 1600 and ending with Google in 1998 -- all began with a revolutionary new product or concept and were successful in bringing it to market. Along the way, they suffered the inevitable setbacks, skepticism and even humiliation that any startups endure -- until ultimate triumph, acceptance and, in some cases, inevitable decline. Along the way we see triumph and tragedy.
The success stories are not always the product of great vision: sometimes they occur by accident, as in the case of Thomas Cook, the Baptist minister who started organizing weekend train journeys in Leicester as a way of combatting intemperance and ended up the head of a global company that effectively invented tourism. Or the Amsterdam Exchange Bank, which began taking deposits of gold and silver, giving receipts in exchange, and in the process created the global monetary system. Some, like the profile of CNN, portray a determined pioneer like Ted Turner, who believed there was a market for a news network that did not depend on people getting home from work in time to watch the six o'clock news. Throughout, the book is sprinkled with entertaining details about the founders, such as Isaac Singer, inventor of the Singer sewing machine, who had nearly as many wives as inventions, or Anita Roddick, the ex-hippie whose stint as a flower child in San Francisco gave her the idea to found the Body Shop, whose concept of all natural products and ethical capitalism took the world by storm. We learn of Baron Bich, the Duponts, the global success of Wonderbra, the origins of Microsoft, Apple and Levi Strauss. Along the way we learn the stories of Toyota, Volkswagen, Sony, Swatch and a host of others, including the Al Jazeera network. There will inevitably be debates about which companies should have been included and weren't.
All this is delivered more with a journalist's flair than an accountant's pencil, but who cares? When you're changing the world, let someone else dot the "i's" and cross the "t's". Mantle's book is admirably illustrated with photos, designs and illustrations, unfortunately only in black and white. It's ideal reading for the train or plane, filled as it is with bite-sized delicacies -- and would go well under the Christmas tree. Let's just hope it is soon to be followed by a second book -- "Fifty More Companies that Changed the World", which will include all the ones I wish had been there and weren't. But that is just wishful thinking.
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"Companies that Changed the World" tells the fascinating stories of 50 joint-stock companies - or companies based on that model - that have exerted a critical influence on the social and economic history of the past four hundred years. As well describing clearly and accessibly the companies' growth and influence over time, and profiling the pioneering entrepreneurs who built them, Jonathan Mantle's text is crammed with intriguing and unexpected information: from the role played by the humble pigeon in the history of news dissemination to how a pharmacist's five-cent patent medicine became the world's most powerful brand. Each of the 50 companies profiled has changed - and reflected change in - the world of its time, in far-reaching and often unexpected ways. Together, their stories amount to nothing less than a concise history of commerce and capitalism.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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