billdoll

Summary of Summaries from Top 1000 Billionaires

2010-09-17T05:33:00.000-07:00

Summary of Summaries from Top 1000 Billionaires

==============NEWNESS==============

==ENTERING A NEW MARKET UNDERGOING DISCONTINUITY EARLY==
==BEING A PIONEER IN A VERTICAL MARKET SEGMENT AND BECOMING THE LARGEST AND MOST WELL KNOWN IN IT==
==IDENTIFYING A NEW, LARGE MARKET FOR AN EXISTING PRODUCT LINE==
==BEING ONE OF THE FIRST TO START WORKING IN A NEW MARKET==
==BEING THE FIRST TO LAUNCH A PRODUCT EVEN IF FOR A NICHE MARKET SEGMENT==
==DISCOVERING INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES EARLY==
==GETTING A NEW ADVERTISING / MARKETING STRATEGY THAT GELS BRILLIANTLY WITH THE PRODUCT / SERVICE==

=========CONNECTIONS===========

==USING FAMILY CONNECTIONS==
==NURTURING BIG CONTACTS==
==POLITICAL CONNECTIONS==
==BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS==
==STUDYING WITH FUTURE BIG HONCHOS==

==========OBSERVING & RESEARCH=============
==OBSERVING UNIQUE / INNOVATIVE OPPORTUNITIES==
==LOOKING FOR TRENDS THAT INDICATE PHENOMENAL MARKET GROWTH==
==REVIEWING AND ANALYSING POSSIBLE BUSINESSES BEFORE GETTING IN==
==SEEKING OPPORTUNITIES FROM EVERYDAY PROBLEMS, ESPECIALLY PROBLEMS IN USING A/THE PRODUCT==
==OBSERVING OPPORTUNITIES ALONG THE BUSINESS VALUE CHAIN OR IN A SPECIFIC PROCESS IN THE VALUE CHAIN==
==RESEARCHING WHAT COMPETITORS HAVE DONE==
==OBSERVING TRENDS AND BEHAVIOURS==
==TAKING BIG RISKS AFTER DEEP THINKING==
==GOING AROUND THE WORLD AND OBSERVING WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING IN THE FIELD==
==A GOOD EYE FOR SPOTTING BUYING OPPORTUNITIES==
==ABILITY TO FORECAST SHORT TERM TRENDS AND MOVING QUICKLY==
==TRANSLATING BROAD ECONOMIC TRENDS INTO HIGHLY LEVERAGED, KILLER PLAYS==
==BIG GAINS BY EXPLOITING SHORT TERM PRICE / ARBITRAGE OPPORTUNITIES==

=========STRATEGY============

==SPOTTING A MARKET OPPORTUNITY EITHER IN TERMS OF PRODUCT OR PRICE OR WHATEVER==
==INVESTING HEAVILY IN A MASS MARKET PRODUCT SEGMENT AND CAPTURING HUGE MARKET SHARE==
==VISION, PATIENCE AND EXECUTION==
==FOCUSSING ON BUSINESS AND KEEPING OUT OF PARTY CIRCLES AND POLITICS==
==ABILITY TO MASS PRODUCE SOMETHING THAT WAS CUSTOM MADE EARLIER AND THUS SELL AT LOWER PRICES==
==KEEPING THE COMPANY PRIVATE==
==CREATIVE DESTRUCTION==
==MAKING SURE CUSTOMERS ARE EXTREMELY SATISFIED WITH WHAT YOU OFFER==
==BUYING THINGS ON THE CHEAP, WHIPPING THEM INTO SHAPE AND RUTHLESSLY DRIVE COMPETITORS OUT OF BUSINESS==
==OFFERING COLLEAGUES TO BECOME MORE INVOLVED IN THE COMPANY FROM A FINANCIAL AND OWNERSHIP PERSPECTIVE==

===========SKILLS===========

==GREAT TEAM WITH COMPLEMENTARY SKILLS==
==FORMING JOINT VENTURES / TECH PARTNERSHIPS==
==UNIQUE INTERSECTION OF DIVERGENT AND HIGH END SKILLS==
==CHOOSING A BUSINESS PARTNER WHO COULD HIMSELF BECOME A CELEBRITY OR AN INDUSTRY/PRODUCT INFLUENCER==
==HAVING A PARTNER WHO IS A FINANCIAL GENIUS==
==GETTING ACQUAINTED TO A TECH OR A PRODUCT VERY EARLY IN LIFE==
==HAVING PEOPLE WITH COMPLEMENTARY KNOWLEDGE IS IMPORTANT IF YOU WISH TO BUILD SOMETHING THAT IS COMPLEX AND INTEGRATED==

============FIRST============

==FIRST TO DO SOMETHING THAT HAS A MASS MARKET==

===========PERSONALITY==========

==A REBEL AND A CONTRARIAN==
==BRUSHING ALL YOUR SENSES EVERYDAY AND KEEPING THEM ABSOLUTELY ACTIVE==
==GENTLEMANLY WAY OF DOING BUSINESS==
==HELPS OTHERS, EVEN COMPETITORS IN A PERSONAL WAY==
==ABILITY TO LEAD CONFLICTS, ESP CORPORATE CONFLICTS==
==GOOD DEAL MAKER==
==QUICK TO ACCEPT MISTAKES AND TAKE ACTION==
==FOCUSSING ON ONE SINGLE THING 24 HOURS A DAY AND DOING IT REALLY, REALLY WELL==
==SHARING SPOILS WITH COLLEAGUES==

=======CRISES AND DISCONTINUITIES=====

==BENETTING FROM ECONOMIC / REGULATORY DISCONTINUITIES==
==BENEFITTING FROM CRISES==
==SEEING WHAT DISCONTINUITIES / CRISES COULD COME IN FUTURE AND ACTING QUICKLY TO BENEFIT FROM THEM==
==BENEFITTING FROM ECONOMIC AND REGULATORY DISCONTINUITIES ESP DURING NASCENT STAGES OF A MARKET==
==GOT FIRED, AND GOT FIRED UP==
==TAKING ADVANTAGE OF A MARKET VACUUM==

============LUCKY BASTARDS==============

==BEING IN THE RIGHT SPOT AT THE RIGHT TIME==
==CATCHING LUCKY BREAKS??==
==BEING THE SON OF AN INFLUENTIAL PERSON IN A RELATED INDUSTRY==
==BORN IN THE RIGHT TIME IN THE CORRECT FAMILY==

========PASSION & INTEREST===========

==HAVING A TINKERER'S MINDSET==
==PASSION ABOUT THE CORE ACTIVITY THAT HIS BUSINESS FOCUSSES ON==
==ENJOY WORKING WITH THE CORE PRODUCT AND INNOVATING IT==
==TALENT AND PASSION FOR INNOVATIONS IN THE PRODUCT==
==IF YOU LITERALLY GET SOME IDEA IN THE DREAM, IT IS POSSIBLY WORTH PURSUING==
==USEFUL PRODUCT INNOVATION==

=====================CONTRARIAN===================

==BUYING THINGS WHEN EVERYONE IS SELLING IN A DISTRESS MARKET==
==DOING IMPORTANT THINGS THAT COMPETITORS DO NOT DO OUT OF HABIT OR CUSTOM==
==CONTRARIAN THINKING==
==INVESTING IN A COUNTRY WHEN THE OTHERS ARE RUNNING AWAY FROM IT==

==================MARKETING & ADVERTISING=============
==GREAT ADVERTISING OF A BRAND==
==GETTING A NEW ADVERTISING / MARKETING STRATEGY THAT GELS BRILLIANTLY WITH THE PRODUCT / SERVICE ==

======================EARLY MOVER=========================
==TAKING A PRODUCT EARLY TO THE MARKET INSTEAD OF GETTING INTO ANALYSIS PARALYSIS==
==JOINING THE RIGHT COMPANY EARLY IN CAREER==
==SPOTTING OPPORTUNITIES EARLY AND MOVING IN==
==BEING AN EARLY EMPLOYEE OF A STARTUP THAT BECOMES VERY LARGE LATER==

==================OPTIMAL STUFF - TIME AND PLACE==================
==MOVING THE BUSINESS HEADQUARTERS INTO THE MOST OPTIMAL LOCATION==
==GETTING TO DO THE RIGHT KIND OF ACTIVITY AT THE RIGHT TIME==

======================NIMBLENESS==================
=MOVING QUICKLY IN A NASCENT MARKET TO ESTABLISH CLEAR LEADERSHIP==
==TAKING MORE ACTIONS EVEN IF IT MEANS MAKING MORE MISTAKES==
==NIMBLE BUSINESSMAN GETS VERY WEALTHY WHEN THERE ARE BIG POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS==
==SPLIT YOUR LIFE INTO TEN MINUTE PACKETS==
==RESPONDING QUICKLY TO MARKET NEEDS==

=================THINKING BIG==================
==FOCUSSING ON BECOMING THE LARGEST==

Summary from the top 100 billionaires

2010-09-15T21:41:00.000-07:00

Nobutada Saji
==FIRST TO DO SOMETHING THAT HAS A MASS MARKET==

David and Simon Reuben
==GREAT TEAM WITH COMPLEMENTARY SKILLS==
==ENTERING A NEW MARKET UNDERGOING DISCONTINUITY EARLY==

Leonard Blavatnik
==ENTERING A NEW MARKET WITH DISCONTINUITIES EARLY==

Tadashi Yanai
==GREAT ADVERTISING OF A BRAND==
==A REBEL AND A CONTRARIAN==
==RESEARCHING WHAT COMPETITORS HAVE DONE==
==TAKING BIG RISKS AFTER DEEP THINKING==

Petr Kellner
==BENETTING FROM ECONOMIC / REGULATORY DISCONTINUITIES==

John Fredriksen
==BENEFITTING FROM CRISES==
==BEING IN THE RIGHT SPOT AT THE RIGHT TIME==

Sunil Mittal
==OBSERVING UNIQUE / INNOVATIVE OPPORTUNITIES==
==FORMING JOINT VENTURES / TECH PARTNERSHIPS==
==SEEING WHAT DISCONTINUITIES / CRISES COULD COME IN FUTURE AND ACTING QUICKLY TO BENEFIT FROM THEM==

Jim Simons
==UNIQUE INTERSECTION OF DIVERGENT AND HIGH END SKILLS==

Kushal Pal Singh
==BENEFITTING FROM CRISES==
==USING FAMILY CONNECTIONS==
==BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS==
==CATCHING LUCKY BRAKES??==
==NURTURING BIG CONTACTS==

Silvio Berlusconi
==POLITICAL CONNECTIONS==

Sheldon Adelson
==BEING A PIONEER IN A VERTICAL MARKET SEGMENT AND BECOMING THE LARGEST AND MOST WELL KNOWN IN IT==

Ricardo Salinas
==IDENTIFYING A NEW, LARGE MARKET FOR AN EXISTING PRODUCT LINE==

Phil Knight
==PASSION ABOUT THE CORE ACTIVITY THAT HIS BUSINESS FOCUSSES ON==
==GOING AROUND THE WORLD AND OBSERVING WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING IN THE FIELD==
==GETTING A NEW ADVERTISING / MARKETING STRATEGY THAT GELS BRILLIANTLY WITH THE PRODUCT / SERVICE ==
==CHOOSING A BUSINESS PARTNER WHO COULD HIMSELF BECOME A CELEBRITY OR AN INDUSTRY/PRODUCT INFLUENCER==

Leonardo Del Vecchio
==MOVING THE BUSINESS HEADQUARTERS INTO THE MOST OPTIMAL LOCATION==

Jeffrey Bezos
==HAVING A TINKERER'S MINDSET==
==LOOKING FOR TRENDS THAT INDICATE PHENOMENAL MARKET GROWTH==
==REVIEWING AND ANALYSING POSSIBLE BUSINESSES BEFORE GETTING IN==
==FOCUSSING ON BECOMING THE LARGEST==

Mikhail Fridman
==POLITICAL CONNECTIONS==
==GETTING TO DO THE RIGHT KIND OF ACTIVITY AT THE RIGHT TIME==
==ABILITY TO LEAD CONFLICTS, ESP CORPORATE CONFLICTS==

Ravi and Shashi Ruia
==MOVING QUICKLY IN A NASCENT MARKET TO ESTABLISH CLEAR LEADERSHIP==

Mikhail Prokhorov
==BENEFITTING FROM ECONOMIC AND REGULATORY DISCONTINUITIES ESP DURING NASCENT STAGES OF A MARKET==
==BORN IN THE RIGHT TIME IN THE CORRECT FAMILY==
==HAVING A PARTNER WHO IS A FINANCIAL GENIUS==

Michael Dell
==GETTING ACQUAINTED TO A TECH OR A PRODUCT VERY EARLY IN LIFE==
==OBSERVING TRENDS AND BEHAVIOURS==
==TAKING MORE ACTIONS EVEN IF IT MEANS MAKING MORE MISTAKES==
==SPOTTING A MARKET OPPORTUNITY EITHER IN TERMS OF PRODUCT OR PRICE OR WHATEVER==
==FOCUSSING ON ONE SINGLE THING 24 HOURS A DAY AND DOING IT REALLY, REALLY WELL==

Paul Allen
==A GOOD EYE FOR SPOTTING BUYING OPPORTUNITIES==
==GOOD DEAL MAKER==

George Soros
==QUICK TO ACCEPT MISTAKES AND TAKE ACTION==
==ABILITY TO FORECAST SHORT TERM TRENDS AND MOVING QUICKLY==
==TRANSLATING BROAD ECONOMIC TRENDS INTO HIGHLY LEVERAGED, KILLER PLAYS==

Robert Kuok
==BIG GAINS BY EXPLOITING SHORT TERM PRICE / ARBITRAGE OPPORTUNITIES==
==INVESTING HEAVILY IN A MASS MARKET PRODUCT SEGMENT AND CAPTURING HUGE MARKET SHARE==
==BRUSHING ALL YOUR SENSES EVERYDAY AND KEEPING THEM ABSOLUTELY ACTIVE==
==SHARING SPOILS WITH COLLEAGUES==
==NIMBLE BUSINESSMAN GETS VERY WEALTHY WHEN THERE ARE BIG POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS==
==MAKING BIG FORTUNES FROM CRISES==
==INVESTING IN A COUNTRY WHEN THE OTHERS ARE RUNNING AWAY FROM IT==
==HAVING BIG POLITICAL CONNECTIONS==
==GENTLEMANLY WAY OF DOING BUSINESS==
==HELPS OTHERS, EVEN COMPETITORS IN A PERSONAL WAY==
==SPOTTING OPPORTUNITIES EARLY AND MOVING IN==

Steve Ballmer
==BEING AN EARLY EMPLOYEE OF A STARTUP THAT BECOMES VERY LARGE LATER==
==STUDYING WITH FUTURE BIG HONCHOS==
==VISION, PATIENCE AND EXECUTION==

Vladimir Lisin
==FOCUSSING ON BUSINESS AND KEEPING OUT OF PARTY CIRCLES AND POLITICS==

Azim Premji
==TAKING ADVANTAGE OF A MARKET VACUUM==

Michele Ferrero
==ABILITY TO MASS PRODUCE SOMETHING THAT WAS CUSTOM MADE EARLIER AND THUS SELL AT LOWER PRICES==
==TALENT AND PASSION FOR INNOVATIONS IN THE PRODUCT==

SERGEY BRIN AND LARRY PAGE
==IF YOU LITERALLY GET SOME IDEA IN THE DREAM, IT IS POSSIBLY WORTH PURSUING==

Charles Koch (and David Koch)
==KEEPING THE COMPANY PRIVATE==
==CREATIVE DESTRUCTION==

Michael Bloomberg
==GOT FIRED, AND GOT FIRED UP==
==TAKING A PRODUCT EARLY TO THE MARKET INSTEAD OF GETTING INTO ANALYSIS PARALYSIS==

Sam Walton
==JOINING THE RIGHT COMPANY EARLY IN CAREER==
==OFFERING COLLEAGUES TO BECOME MORE INVOLVED IN THE COMPANY FROM A FINANCIAL AND OWNERSHIP PERSPECTIVE==
==MAKING SURE CUSTOMERS ARE EXTREMELY SATISFIED WITH WHAT YOU OFFER==
==DOING IMPORTANT THINGS THAT COMPETITORS DO NOT DO OUT OF HABIT OR CUSTOM==
==CONTRARIAN THINKING==

Ingvar Kamprad
==USEFUL PRODUCT INNOVATION==
==SPLIT YOUR LIFE INTO TEN MINUTE PACKETS==
==SEEKING OPPORTUNITIES FROM EVERYDAY PROBLEMS, ESPECIALLY PROBLEMS IN USING A/THE PRODUCT==

Amancio Ortega Gaona
==OBSERVING OPPORTUNITIES ALONG THE BUSINESS VALUE CHAIN OR IN A SPECIFIC PROCESS IN THE VALUE CHAIN==
==RESPONDING QUICKLY TO MARKET NEEDS==
==ENJOY WORKING WITH THE CORE PRODUCT AND INNOVATING IT==

Eike Batista
==HAVING PEOPLE WITH COMPLEMENTARY KNOWLEDGE IS IMPORTANT IF YOU WISH TO BUILD SOMETHING THAT IS COMPLEX AND INTEGRATED==
==BEING THE SON OF AN INFLUENTIAL PERSON IN A RELATED INDUSTRY==

Carlos Slim Helu
==BEING THE FIRST TO LAUNCH A PRODUCT EVEN IF FOR A NICHE MARKET SEGMENT==
==DISCOVERING INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES EARLY==
==BUYING THINGS ON THE CHEAP, WHIPPING THEM INTO SHAPE AND RUTHLESSLY DRIVE COMPETITORS OUT OF BUSINESS==
==BECOMING FRIEND WITH TOP POLITICAL LEADERSHIP==
==BUYING THINGS WHEN EVERYONE IS SELLING IN A DISTRESS MARKET==
==BEING ONE OF THE FIRST TO START WORKING IN A NEW MARKET==

=======================================================================

==============NEWNESS==============

==ENTERING A NEW MARKET UNDERGOING DISCONTINUITY EARLY==
==BEING A PIONEER IN A VERTICAL MARKET SEGMENT AND BECOMING THE LARGEST AND MOST WELL KNOWN IN IT==
==IDENTIFYING A NEW, LARGE MARKET FOR AN EXISTING PRODUCT LINE==
==BEING ONE OF THE FIRST TO START WORKING IN A NEW MARKET==
==BEING THE FIRST TO LAUNCH A PRODUCT EVEN IF FOR A NICHE MARKET SEGMENT==
==DISCOVERING INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES EARLY==
==GETTING A NEW ADVERTISING / MARKETING STRATEGY THAT GELS BRILLIANTLY WITH THE PRODUCT / SERVICE ==

=========CONNECTIONS===========

==USING FAMILY CONNECTIONS==
==NURTURING BIG CONTACTS==
==POLITICAL CONNECTIONS==
==BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS==
==STUDYING WITH FUTURE BIG HONCHOS==

==========OBSERVING & RESEARCH=============
==OBSERVING UNIQUE / INNOVATIVE OPPORTUNITIES==
==LOOKING FOR TRENDS THAT INDICATE PHENOMENAL MARKET GROWTH==
==REVIEWING AND ANALYSING POSSIBLE BUSINESSES BEFORE GETTING IN==
==SEEKING OPPORTUNITIES FROM EVERYDAY PROBLEMS, ESPECIALLY PROBLEMS IN USING A/THE PRODUCT==
==OBSERVING OPPORTUNITIES ALONG THE BUSINESS VALUE CHAIN OR IN A SPECIFIC PROCESS IN THE VALUE CHAIN==
==RESEARCHING WHAT COMPETITORS HAVE DONE==
==OBSERVING TRENDS AND BEHAVIOURS==
==TAKING BIG RISKS AFTER DEEP THINKING==
==GOING AROUND THE WORLD AND OBSERVING WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING IN THE FIELD==
==A GOOD EYE FOR SPOTTING BUYING OPPORTUNITIES==
==ABILITY TO FORECAST SHORT TERM TRENDS AND MOVING QUICKLY==
==TRANSLATING BROAD ECONOMIC TRENDS INTO HIGHLY LEVERAGED, KILLER PLAYS==
==BIG GAINS BY EXPLOITING SHORT TERM PRICE / ARBITRAGE OPPORTUNITIES==

=========STRATEGY============

==SPOTTING A MARKET OPPORTUNITY EITHER IN TERMS OF PRODUCT OR PRICE OR WHATEVER==
==INVESTING HEAVILY IN A MASS MARKET PRODUCT SEGMENT AND CAPTURING HUGE MARKET SHARE==
==VISION, PATIENCE AND EXECUTION==
==FOCUSSING ON BUSINESS AND KEEPING OUT OF PARTY CIRCLES AND POLITICS==
==ABILITY TO MASS PRODUCE SOMETHING THAT WAS CUSTOM MADE EARLIER AND THUS SELL AT LOWER PRICES==
==KEEPING THE COMPANY PRIVATE==
==CREATIVE DESTRUCTION==
==MAKING SURE CUSTOMERS ARE EXTREMELY SATISFIED WITH WHAT YOU OFFER==
==BUYING THINGS ON THE CHEAP, WHIPPING THEM INTO SHAPE AND RUTHLESSLY DRIVE COMPETITORS OUT OF BUSINESS==
==OFFERING COLLEAGUES TO BECOME MORE INVOLVED IN THE COMPANY FROM A FINANCIAL AND OWNERSHIP PERSPECTIVE==

===========SKILLS===========

==GREAT TEAM WITH COMPLEMENTARY SKILLS==
==FORMING JOINT VENTURES / TECH PARTNERSHIPS==
==UNIQUE INTERSECTION OF DIVERGENT AND HIGH END SKILLS==
==CHOOSING A BUSINESS PARTNER WHO COULD HIMSELF BECOME A CELEBRITY OR AN INDUSTRY/PRODUCT INFLUENCER==
==HAVING A PARTNER WHO IS A FINANCIAL GENIUS==
==GETTING ACQUAINTED TO A TECH OR A PRODUCT VERY EARLY IN LIFE==
==HAVING PEOPLE WITH COMPLEMENTARY KNOWLEDGE IS IMPORTANT IF YOU WISH TO BUILD SOMETHING THAT IS COMPLEX AND INTEGRATED==

============FIRST============

==FIRST TO DO SOMETHING THAT HAS A MASS MARKET==

===========PERSONALITY==========

==A REBEL AND A CONTRARIAN==
==BRUSHING ALL YOUR SENSES EVERYDAY AND KEEPING THEM ABSOLUTELY ACTIVE==
==GENTLEMANLY WAY OF DOING BUSINESS==
==HELPS OTHERS, EVEN COMPETITORS IN A PERSONAL WAY==
==ABILITY TO LEAD CONFLICTS, ESP CORPORATE CONFLICTS==
==GOOD DEAL MAKER==
==QUICK TO ACCEPT MISTAKES AND TAKE ACTION==
==FOCUSSING ON ONE SINGLE THING 24 HOURS A DAY AND DOING IT REALLY, REALLY WELL==
==SHARING SPOILS WITH COLLEAGUES==

=======CRISES AND DISCONTINUITIES=====

==BENETTING FROM ECONOMIC / REGULATORY DISCONTINUITIES==
==BENEFITTING FROM CRISES==
==SEEING WHAT DISCONTINUITIES / CRISES COULD COME IN FUTURE AND ACTING QUICKLY TO BENEFIT FROM THEM==
==BENEFITTING FROM ECONOMIC AND REGULATORY DISCONTINUITIES ESP DURING NASCENT STAGES OF A MARKET==
==GOT FIRED, AND GOT FIRED UP==
==TAKING ADVANTAGE OF A MARKET VACUUM==

============LUCKY BASTARDS==============

==BEING IN THE RIGHT SPOT AT THE RIGHT TIME==
==CATCHING LUCKY BREAKS??==
==BEING THE SON OF AN INFLUENTIAL PERSON IN A RELATED INDUSTRY==
==BORN IN THE RIGHT TIME IN THE CORRECT FAMILY==

========PASSION & INTEREST===========

==HAVING A TINKERER'S MINDSET==
==PASSION ABOUT THE CORE ACTIVITY THAT HIS BUSINESS FOCUSSES ON==
==ENJOY WORKING WITH THE CORE PRODUCT AND INNOVATING IT==
==TALENT AND PASSION FOR INNOVATIONS IN THE PRODUCT==
==IF YOU LITERALLY GET SOME IDEA IN THE DREAM, IT IS POSSIBLY WORTH PURSUING==
==USEFUL PRODUCT INNOVATION==

=====================CONTRARIAN===================

==BUYING THINGS WHEN EVERYONE IS SELLING IN A DISTRESS MARKET==
==DOING IMPORTANT THINGS THAT COMPETITORS DO NOT DO OUT OF HABIT OR CUSTOM==
==CONTRARIAN THINKING==
==INVESTING IN A COUNTRY WHEN THE OTHERS ARE RUNNING AWAY FROM IT==

==================MARKETING & ADVERTISING=============
==GREAT ADVERTISING OF A BRAND==
==GETTING A NEW ADVERTISING / MARKETING STRATEGY THAT GELS BRILLIANTLY WITH THE PRODUCT / SERVICE ==

======================EARLY MOVER=========================
==TAKING A PRODUCT EARLY TO THE MARKET INSTEAD OF GETTING INTO ANALYSIS PARALYSIS==
==JOINING THE RIGHT COMPANY EARLY IN CAREER==
==SPOTTING OPPORTUNITIES EARLY AND MOVING IN==
==BEING AN EARLY EMPLOYEE OF A STARTUP THAT BECOMES VERY LARGE LATER==

==================OPTIMAL STUFF - TIME AND PLACE==================
==MOVING THE BUSINESS HEADQUARTERS INTO THE MOST OPTIMAL LOCATION==
==GETTING TO DO THE RIGHT KIND OF ACTIVITY AT THE RIGHT TIME==

======================NIMBLENESS==================
=MOVING QUICKLY IN A NASCENT MARKET TO ESTABLISH CLEAR LEADERSHIP==
==TAKING MORE ACTIONS EVEN IF IT MEANS MAKING MORE MISTAKES==
==NIMBLE BUSINESSMAN GETS VERY WEALTHY WHEN THERE ARE BIG POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS==
==SPLIT YOUR LIFE INTO TEN MINUTE PACKETS==
==RESPONDING QUICKLY TO MARKET NEEDS==

=================THINKING BIG==================
==FOCUSSING ON BECOMING THE LARGEST==

Nobutada Saji

2010-09-12T07:41:00.000-07:00

Nobutada Saji is a Japanese businessman. As of 2004, he is the wealthiest individual in Japan, with a net worth of $5.8 billion. Saji became CEO of Suntory in 2001. Leads $11 billion (sales) beverage and food company, Suntory. The company was founded in 1899 by his grandfather and was the first to sell Western liquor in Japan. While their profit has been decreasing at home in recent years, business is thriving in China. Its beer has a more than 50% market share in the Shanghai region. Saji is a serious swimmer as well as an avid reader.

Japan's fourth-largest brewer and food manufacturer. He was the wealthiest individual in Japan as of 2004, with a net worth of $6.9 billion; however, a Forbes survey in June 2006 downgraded him to the fourth-richest, with a net worth of $5 billion.

Link

Highlights

* The company was founded in 1899 by his grandfather and was the first to sell Western liquor in Japan.
==FIRST TO SOMETHING THAT HAS A MASS MARKET==

David and Simon Reuben

2010-09-12T04:55:00.000-07:00

* One friend, who spends time with Simon at the Isle de France Hotel in St Barts, said they are "trustworthy and really rather shy." And an executive who works closely with them said: "People often say that they are secretive but it's more a case of being very private. They are just not ostentatious people. David is the trader and Simon is the investor. They work brilliantly together. They are quite different. For example, David is a technophile and loves gadgets while Simon is completely the opposite. But I have been with them when they finish sentences for each other. In a business sense, they are incredibly smart and have a reputation for never having overpaid for anything."
* In the early 1990s they saw the opportunities in Russia and entered the metals market there, investing significantly in the production and distribution of metals. The Reubens exploited the wild selling taking place in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet system to buy up half of Russia's aluminium industry and become the world's third-biggest producer of the metal — and this at a time when Russia represented frontier capitalism at its craziest.
Link
* By early 2000 the Russian business environment had turned sour for many western investors and it was at this point that they moved their interests to the UK market and property in particular. With a rumoured war chest of around £1.5 billion to play with they soon set up a property investment group which had no debt, liquid assets and a variety of bonds. This very quickly became the hallmark of the Rubens business strategy where debt is very rare which ensures that they are never forced sellers of their properties.
Link

Highlights

* David is the trader and Simon is the investor. They work brilliantly together. They are quite different. For example, David is a technophile and loves gadgets while Simon is completely the opposite.
* In the early 1990s they saw the opportunities in Russia and entered the metals market there, investing significantly in the production and distribution of metals.

==GREAT TEAM WITH COMPLEMENTARY SKILLS==
==ENTERING A NEW MARKET UNDERGOING DISCONTINUITY EARLY==

Leonard Blavatnik

2010-09-12T04:45:00.000-07:00

* Born in the Soviet Union, he attended University in Moscow. He emigrated with his family from Russia to the U.S. in 1978, and received a masters in computer science from Columbia University and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1989. In 1986 he founded Access Industries, a New York-based international industrial group, of which he is Chairman and President. Access has long-term strategic holdings in Europe, North and South America. Initially, he moved into Russian investments, just after the fall of communism. With a friend from University, Viktor Vekselberg, he formed the Renova investment vehicle, and the two joined with Mikhail Fridman's Alfa Group to form the AAR venture. To date, Access has diversified its portfolio to include investments in industries such as oil, coal, aluminum, petrochemicals and plastics, telecommunications, media, and real estate. AAR gained a controlling stake in Russian oil company TNK through privatisation auctions, then in 2003 sold 50% stake to British Petroleum to form TNK-BP, one of Russia's largest oil companies, for which he serves on the board of directors. Link

Highlights

* Initially, he moved into Russian investments, just after the fall of communism.

==ENTERING A NEW MARKET WITH DISCONTINUITIES EARLY==

Tadashi Yanai

2010-09-12T04:10:00.000-07:00

* TADASHI YANAI is one of Japan’s most dynamic and innovative businessmen. After taking over his father’s suit shop in 1984 in a sleepy industrial city far from the fashionable capital, he transformed it into Uniqlo, Japan’s biggest retailer, and is now striving to make it the world’s largest. His success has made him the country's richest person, worth more than $9 billion.
* Uniqlo was anything but “cool”. Its first store in Tokyo had just opened in Harajuku and suddenly after the commercials launched, Uniqlo sales people faced a long line of customers each day queing in front of the store before it opened. As it can only happen in Tokyo, the lines of people kept growing throughout the week. A series of 30 second commercials by Wieden + Kennedy Tokyo, featured a wide array of Japanese, who talk about their personal lives, became an overnight sensation. The commercials each ended with a 1900 yen (approximiately $19 ) high quality fleece top available in 24 colors made exclusively by Uniqlo. It was the casual top that changed an entire industry.
* It is a busy Tokyo Saturday, September 1999, as the escalator rises to a floor of high fashion at Barney’s, carrying a young fashionable couple and their conversation is overheard: “ Have you seen the Uniqlo TV commercial? Uniqlo is so cool.” That was a seminal moment, the beginning of a retail revolution in Tokyo, one that reverberates today from Harajuku of Tokyo to SoHo of New York to Oxford Street of London. This former suburban discount apparel shop suddenly burst onto the fashion scene as a new alternative to the elitism of cool with a message of a casual democratic style fit for all Japanese.
* Japan is not known for its rebels, it is a society which has prospered by social and economic balance, preventing differences between people in a homogenous culture. The society does not naturally celebrate or nurture rebels...especially in business. Yanai, however, has a natural skill in walking the tightrope of chance. He is willing to take risks, big risks and he has the self-confidence to survive most failures. Uniqlo had failed once in London after its first big boom in Japan, yet Uniqlo relaunches in the city with two new shops on Oxford Street designed by Masamichi Katayama of Tokyo.
* As a young man, Yanai would visit Barney’s N.Y. at its original location, downtown on West 17th Street and the similarities between the two companies as mens shops brought him to study the New York shop before it bcame an icon of high style. “At the time, they were simply a menswear store - they weren’t a full-specialty store yet at the time. So they were selling brands like Polo and Izod, and it was a great learning experience.” These trips to New York and Barneys gave Yanai the opportunity to study how they marketed and expanded their men’s products from suits to sportswear and later evolve into a full-fledged women’s specialty fashion store.
(Link)
* Kashiwa Sato, the influential designer who also has served as consulting Creative Director for the Uniqlo global branding projects, says of him,” ...at a time when people fear change, Yanai-san is definitely a rebel. For the new generation, seeking a new way and new values, I think he is truly a pioneer.”
* “My recommendation to every member of our company is take your risks after deep thinking.”
Link
* Tadashi Yanai is everything a typical Japanese chief executive isn't: aggressive, opinionated, and unapologetic. His company, aptly named Fast Retailing Co., has become Japan's fastest-growing store chain, mainly by bucking tradition and challenging established rivals on their own turf. Yanai's secret is selling casual duds such as slacks and socks much like McDonald's meals: His chain of 500 no-frills apparel outlets, called UNIQLO, with total sales of $3.3 billion expected this year, offers a set menu at unbeatable prices. For the full year through August, the company forecasts pretax income of $866 million, making it far more profitable than retail giants such as The Daiei Inc. and JUSCO Co. Yanai's scorched-earth pricing strategy has earned Fast Retailing the enmity of corporate and government leaders in Japan, who blame it for stoking deflation in the apparel industry.\

Link

Highlights

* A great ad for Uniqlo became an overnight sensation. The commercials each ended with a 1900 yen (approximiately $19 ) high quality fleece top available in 24 colors made exclusively by Uniqlo. It was the casual top that changed an entire industry.
* “ Have you seen the Uniqlo TV commercial? Uniqlo is so cool.” That was a seminal moment, the beginning of a retail revolution in Tokyo
* Japanese society does not naturally celebrate or nurture rebels...especially in business. Yanai, however, has a natural skill in walking the tightrope of chance.
* As a young man, Yanai would visit Barney’s N.Y. at its original location, downtown on West 17th Street and the similarities between the two companies as mens shops brought him to study the New York shop before it bcame an icon of high style.
* “My recommendation to every member of our company is take your risks after deep thinking.”

==GREAT ADVERTISING OF A BRAND==
==A REBEL AND A CONTRARIAN==
==RESEARCHING WHAT COMPETITORS HAVE DONE==
==TAKING BIG RISKS AFTER DEEP THINKING==

Petr Kellner

2010-09-12T01:53:00.000-07:00

Petr Kellner graduated from the University of Economics, Prague Faculty of Industrial Economics, in 1987. After the Velvet revolution he worked for the Czech company Impromat, an importer and seller of Ricoh photocopiers. While working for that company, he met Milan Maděryč and Milan Vinkler.

In 1991, after the announcement of Czechoslovak voucher privatization he founded, with Maděryč and Vinkler, the investment fund PPF (První privatizační fond). In 1992, PPF investiční společnost a.s. was established and the funds’ names were changed from privatisation to investment. The funds were very successful and purchased stock of more than 200 corporations with value over 5 billion CZK.

Česká pojišťovna

In 1995 and 1996, PPF bought a 20% stake in the largest Czech insurance company, Česká pojišťovna and started to manage it. Later PPF acquired more shares and became the dominant (93%) owner in 2001, when PPF bought large stakes of shares from Komerční banka and the Czech state. With help of these profitable transactions, the last investors from voucher privatization were bought out and Petr Kellner became the dominant owner of PPF group.

Source: Link

He took the utmost advantage of his nation’s privatization reforms. With the help of vouchers and loans he collected 20% stake in Ceska Pojistovna, an insurer that was burdened with bad loans at that period. He finally got cent percent control when he put together a $170 million rescue package. The insurance company now is the largest and its value is estimated to be at $2.7 billion. This makes Kellner the Czech Republic’s first billionaire.

Petr Kellner invested $160 million in the hugely popular Czech Nova TV in the year 2000. He took advantage of the ugly fight between American cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder and a Czech businessman Vladimir Zelezny originally running TV Nova, the biggest television station in the Czech Republic, since 1994. Though later he sold his stake to American billionaire Ronald Lauder again but for a $580 million net profit.

Source: Link

Highlights

* He took the utmost advantage of his nation’s privatization reforms.

==BENETTING FROM ECONOMIC / REGULATORY DISCONTINUITIES==

John Fredriksen

2010-09-12T01:40:00.000-07:00

* Born on Oslo's east side, Etterstad, the son of a welder, Fredriksen began as a trainee in a shipbrokering company. At the age of 27 he started working for himself. Fredriksen made his fortune during the Iran-Iraq wars in the 1980s when his tankers picked up oil at great risk and huge profits. As described by his biographer, "he was the lifeline to the Ayatollah." He is now the world's largest tanker owner, with more than seventy oil tankers, and major interests in oil rigs and fish farming. His fleet is dominated by costly double-hulled, environmentally safer tankers.
* James Winchester, a veteran shipping analyst at Lazard Frères has said of him, "He's a modern-day Onassis. The tanker king. He landed squarely in the sweet spot of the tanker cycle, with the largest fleet of ships." In 2001 an article on Forbes.com described him as having "a tanker fleet bigger than anything Aristotle Onassis ever had."
* Made big investment in liquefied natural gas tankers, betting that LNG would become the next crude oil; wager has yet to pay off.

Highlights

* Fredriksen made his fortune during the Iran-Iraq wars in the 1980s when his tankers picked up oil at great risk and huge profits. As described by his biographer, "he was the lifeline to the Ayatollah."
* "He's a modern-day Onassis. The tanker king. He landed squarely in the sweet spot of the tanker cycle, with the largest fleet of ships."

==BENEFITTING FROM CRISES==
==BEING IN THE RIGHT SPOT AT THE RIGHT TIME==

Sunil Mittal

2010-09-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

His dad was an MP (member of parliament) from Ludhiana.

A first generation entrepreneur, Mittal started his first business in April 1976 at the age of 18, with a capital investment of Rs 20,000 (U$500) borrowed from his father. His first business was to make crankshafts for local bicycle manufacturers.

In 1980 he sold his bicycle parts and yarn factories and moved to Mumbai.

In 1981, he purchased importing licences from exporting companies in Punjab. He then imported thousands of Suzuki Motors's portable electric-power generators from Japan. The importing of generators was suddenly banned by the then Indian Government and just two licences to manufacture generators in India were issued to two companies.

In 1984, he started assembling push-button phones in India replacing the old fashioned, bulky rotary phones that were in use in the country then. Bharti Telecom Limited (BTL) was incorporated and entered into a technical tie up with Siemens AG of Germany for manufacture of electronic push button phones. By the early 1990s, Mittal was making fax machines, cordless phones and other telecom gear. Mittal says, "In 1983, the government imposed a ban on the import of gensets. I was out of business overnight. Everything I was doing came to a screeching halt. I was in trouble. The question then was: what should I do next? Then, opportunity came calling. While in Taiwan, I noticed the popularity of the push-button phone -- something which India hadn't seen then. We were still using those rotary dials with no speed dials or redials. I sensed my chance and embraced the telecom business. I started marketing telephones, answering/fax machines under the brand name Beetel and the company picked up really fast."

In 1992, he successfully bid for one of the four mobile phone network licences auctioned in India. One of the conditions for the Delhi cellular license was that the bidder have some experience as a telecom operator. So, Mittal clinched a deal with the French telecom group Vivendi.

He was one of the first Indian entrepreneurs to identify the mobile telecom business as a major growth area. His plans were finally approved by the Government in 1994 and he launched services in Delhi in 1995, when Bharti Cellular Limited (BCL) was formed to offer cellular services under the brand name AirTel

* His getting the Delhi cellular licence seems to be the real turning point

* People forget now that when the Government of India first opened up the telecom sector, nearly every global telecom player made a beeline for India. Among these experienced multinational players, the Mittals seemed like ignorant pygmies. But Sunil was sure that he could put together a consortium with many of the foreign players and still make a valid bid.

The problem was that he didn’t have much money and he certainly didn’t have much in the way of reputation.What he did have, however, was his personal charisma. He has a unique ability to win people over in one-on-one encounters and if you push him, he will admit that his speciality consists of persuading people to go further than they had originally planned through the sheer force of his personality.

For instance, he pushed Vivendi into going with him after a single meeting. Later, after the deal had been signed, the company sent a team to India to check out exactly who the Mittals were. The team reported back that they were small-timers and likely to remain so. Vivendi pulled the plug days before the bid was to be submitted.

It was time for Sunil to work the phone. He called the company in Paris. ‘ Look,’ he said, ‘ when you agreed to go with me, you sensed something. You saw something in me. Remember that something. Go with your instincts. Forget what your team has told you.’

Against the odds, Vivendi stuck with him.

When the bids were opened, Airtel had won all four circles. The government promptly declared that it had a new rule: one company, one circle. So, Sunil was left with one of the two Delhi licences.

In retrospect, he says, it was just as well that they started with a single circle. He had clearly underestimated the work required in setting up a mobile phone business. And Delhi, in itself, was more than he could handle.

In 1999, the mobile telephone industry was in bad shape. The operators could not pay the huge licence fees they had promised the government. Eventually, a new formula was worked out. The industry would migrate to a revenue-sharing model. But before this could happen, the government asked operators to clear all existing dues.

Sunil had guessed that this was coming. Airtel had talked to its bankers and gathered a substantial war-chest. When many operators could not clear their dues, Sunil swooped down and bought up their licences. At a stroke, he acquired Andhra, Karnataka, Chennai and Punjab. Later, he bought out the Modis from Kolkata. In the process, he had nearly every major city in India except for Mumbai.

That was rectified when the government announced bids for a fourth licence. Airtel won eight new circles: Gujarat, MP, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Western UP and Mumbai. In five years, Sunil had gone from being the man who had lost out to HFCL to becoming the Mobile King of India.

But, the genset experience was about to repeat itself: the Big Boys wanted their share of the market.

When the Ambanis announced that they were entering the mobile telephone sector with CDMA technology (as distinct from Sunil’s GSM phones), the general view was that Airtel was in trouble. The Ambanis were big. They were smart. They had never failed at anything they had tried. And they had the Government of India wrapped up no matter which party was in power.

As though the mere entry of Reliance wasn’t enough of a threat, government policies were amended to favour CDMA operators who had much lower entry costs (and were therefore to claim that CDMA was a cheaper technology) and then, BSNL announced that it would set up its own low-price network.

The general view was that the mobile telephony market would now be transformed. Till then, mobile phones had been a rich man’s tool. Now, between the Ambanis and BSNL, they would undercut the expensive GSM operators and win over their customers with lower rates.

Everybody I know bought the logic and within Airtel, the mood was gloomy. Each year, the company holds a conclave of its senior managers to plan strategy. In 2002, this conclave was held at the Mughal Sheraton in Agra and it was something of a crisis session. ‘We knew that we were fighting for our survival,’ Sunil remembers. ‘ The company was polarized between two points of view. Some people said that we should go out and fight. I had an opposite view because I knew what we were up against. My strategy was to lie low and conserve our energies. Wait till the storm passes and see what the situation is like then. In the interim, we would do our best to get close to the customer.’

The bad phase lasted a year and he says now that it was one of the most difficult periods in his life. ‘ Because morale was so low, I went around meeting our people and giving them hope. I began to watch movies in which the underdog won, the sort of story where guerillas defeated a big army. Everywhere I went, I told my people that I knew that we were not expected to win. But, I would tell them, if we can win against the odds, then we make history.’

It was a story with a happy ending. The Reliance venture is not a failure by any standards. It has around 10-12 million subscribers against Airtel’s 14 million. But it has made no dent in the business of the big GSM operators. Instead, two distinct markets have developed. The top end is dominated by Airtel. The cheap telephony market is Reliance’s own. And of course, the big profits lie in the top end.

"Here's my big confession: life's big secret is how you position yourself to get lucky. Sitting at home, luck wasn't going to knock at my door. You have to be at the right place, at the right time..."

References
1. http://www.merinews.com/article/connecting-with-sunil-bharti-mittal/130238.shtml
2. http://www.virsanghvi.com/interview-detail.aspx?ID=10

Highlights

* His dad was an MP (member of parliament) from Ludhiana.
* While in Taiwan, he noticed the popularity of the push-button phone -- something which India hadn't seen then. He sensed his chance and embraced the telecom business.
* In 1992, he successfully bid for one of the four mobile phone network licences auctioned in India. One of the conditions for the Delhi cellular license was that the bidder have some experience as a telecom operator. So, Mittal clinched a deal with the French telecom group Vivendi.
* In 1999, the mobile telephone industry was in bad shape. The operators could not pay the huge licence fees they had promised the government. The government asked operators to clear all existing dues. Sunil had guessed that this was coming. Airtel had talked to its bankers and gathered a substantial war-chest. When many operators could not clear their dues, Sunil swooped down and bought up their licences.

==OBSERVING UNIQUE / INNOVATIVE OPPORTUNITIES==
==FORMING JOINT VENTURES / TECH PARTNERSHIPS==
==SEEING WHAT DISCONTINUITIES / CRISES COULD COME IN FUTURE AND ACTING QUICKLY TO BENEFIT FROM THEM==

Jim Simons

2010-09-10T23:53:00.000-07:00

Jim Simons is the son of a shoe factory owner in Massachusetts and received his B.S. degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958, and his Ph.D. degree, also in mathematics, from the University of California, Berkeley in 1961 at the age of 23. Between 1964 and 1968, he was on the research staff of the Communications Research Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA). Simons taught mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. In 1968, he was appointed chairman of the math department at Stony Brook University.

In 1978, he left academia to run an investment fund that traded in commodities and financial instruments on a discretionary basis.

For over two decades, Simons' Renaissance Technologies' hedge funds, which trade in markets around the world, have employed complex mathematical models to analyze and execute trades—many of them automated. Renaissance uses computer-based models to predict price changes in easily-traded financial instruments. These models are based on analyzing as much data as can be gathered, then looking for non-random movements to make predictions.

Renaissance employs many specialists with non-financial backgrounds, including mathematicians, physicists and statisticians.

"It's startling to see such a highly successful mathematician achieve success in another field," says Edward Witten, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, and considered by many of his peers to be the most accomplished theoretical physicist alive... (Gregory Zuckerman, "Heard on the Street", Wall Street Journal, July 1, 2005).

Highlights

1. Unique intersection of high end math and finance
2. Renaissance employs many specialists with non-financial backgrounds, including mathematicians, physicists and statisticians.

==UNIQUE INTERSECTION OF DIVERGENT AND HIGH END SKILLS==

François Pinault

2010-09-10T23:36:00.000-07:00

* Close friend of French PM Jacques Chirac

Kushal Pal Singh

2010-09-10T06:07:00.000-07:00

* Kushal Pal Singh's father-in-law Chaudhary Raghvendra Singh was a civil servant with a keen nose for business. Upon independence from Britain the country was to be divided to create Pakistan. Chaudhary Raghvendra figured this would lead to mass migration, which would, in turn, create a need for mass housing. His prescience made him launch Delhi Land & Finance in 1946, a year ahead of Indian independence. Although he lacked capital, Singh went on a land-buying binge. Tapping into old family connections, he convinced farmers to sell their land to him on credit. They would be paid the principal plus interest once the land had been carved into plots and sold. This formula worked so well that he eventually developed 21 residential and commercial "colonies" all over Delhi, including South Extension, Hauz Khas and Greater Kailash, which today are prized properties. The good times ended in 1957, when land development in Delhi was nationalized.

* Over 15 years Singh assembled the Gurgaon holdings, starting with 40 acres that his father-in-law still held. The surrounding families had an average landholding of 4 to 5 acres, with half a dozen relatives sharing the title. To win their trust, he attended weddings, mediated family disputes, helped out during illnesses. "I became part of each family, almost like an elder brother," he recalls. Singh lobbied hard to get the farmland reclassified as "nonagricultural" and managed to obtain licenses for developing it. When they were later canceled as political winds shifted, DLF faced lawsuits from buyers.

* In 1981 Singh caught one of those lucky breaks in his life. As he tells it, he had a chance encounter with Rajiv Gandhi (whose mother, Indira, was still prime minister) when Gandhi's car overheated and he stopped for water at a village well in Gurgaon. Singh happened to be sitting nearby. Young Gandhi leaned on the troublesome local authorities for years, into his own term as premier, and DLF was able to get its foothold. Singh's leap of faith in Gurgaon paid off in spades. The average cost of the 3,000 acres that DLF initially amassed in Gurgaon was $2,000 an acre--a tiny fraction of today's market value. "Gurgaon was deserted when K.P. first took me there to see it 25 years ago. But he had the gumption to go relentlessly after it," says Deepak Parekh, chairman of home mortgage company HDFC, which started lending to DLF early in its expansion drive.

Source: Link

* He invited GE’s CEO Jack Welch. Welch was given a warm welcome at the traditional home of the Maharaja of Jaipur by colorfully dressed riders on elephants and a huge GE logo was made of fresh flowers dominated the front lawn. That visit set the stage for GE’s move six years later into DLF city in Gurgaon. The deal made the American company DLF’s most prominent tenant, helping K P Singh to further expand the operations of DLF in Gurgaon.

Highlights

* Upon independence from Britain the country was to be divided to create Pakistan, a Muslim nation. Chaudhary Raghvendra figured this would lead to mass migration, which would, in turn, create a need for mass housing. His prescience made him launch Delhi Land & Finance in 1946, a year ahead of Indian independence.
* Tapping into old family connections, he convinced farmers to sell their land to him on credit.
* Over 15 years Singh assembled the Gurgaon holdings, starting with 40 acres that his father-in-law still held. The surrounding families had an average landholding of 4 to 5 acres, with half a dozen relatives sharing the title. To win their trust, he attended weddings, mediated family disputes, helped out during illnesses.
* In 1981 Singh caught one of those lucky breaks in his life. He had a chance encounter with Rajiv Gandhi (whose mother, Indira, was still prime minister) when Gandhi's car overheated and he stopped for water at a village well in Gurgaon. Singh happened to be sitting nearby.
* Welch was given a warm welcome at the traditional home of the Maharaja of Jaipur by colorfully dressed riders on elephants and a huge GE logo was made of fresh flowers dominated the front lawn. That visit set the stage for GE’s move six years later into DLF city in Gurgaon.

==BENEFITTING FROM CRISES==
==USING FAMILY CONNECTIONS==
==BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS==
==CATCHING LUCKY BRAKES??==
==NURTURING BIG CONTACTS==

Dan Duncan

2010-09-10T05:44:00.000-07:00

* Dan L. Duncan was born Jan. 2, 1933, and grew up in the East Texas town of Center, near the Louisiana border. He was the son of an oil worker, and his mother died when he was a child.

* After serving in the Army, he learned the oil business from the ground up, working as a semiskilled worker and eventually as an accountant for Wanda Petroleum, a trucking and underground storage company. In 1968, he started his own business, Enterprise Products Partners, with little more than a truck and $10,000.

* Enterprise grew slowly but steadily as a pipeline, processing and storage business. In the late 1990s, Enterprise went public and picked up an empire of assets from other companies that were suffering from low oil prices and financial troubles.

* In 1968 he and a couple of partners co-founded Enterprise Products with one truck and $10,000. He bought out the last partner in 1989, and in 1998 took the company public as a master limited partnership. Never selling shares, he leveraged the cash flow from the pipelines to keep buying and building.

* In 2004 Duncan burst onto the Forbes Rich List for the first time, with a net worth of $4.2 billion. In 2005 he bought the managing partner in control of the Teppco pipeline from Duke Energy for $1.1 billion. That finally led to a buyout of the entire Teppco operation last year. The discovery of massive new natural gas reserves in shale formations like the Eagle Ford and Haynesville have been driving the companies’ growth plans.

* He went on to build a $26 billion company in the part of the natural gas industry known as midstream, between exploration and end-use.

Source: Link

Silvio Berlusconi

2010-09-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

* Berlusconi's business career began in construction early in the 1960s. After a couple of successful projects, he affected in the latter part of that decade the construction of Milano 2, a huge residential project of about 10,500 apartments, which he eventually built in Segrate, an eastern suburb of Milan. The sources for financing these large projects have been obscure and links to the sicilian Mafia have been disputed.

* Berlusconi first entered the media world in 1973 by setting up a small cable television company, Telemilano, to service units built on his Segrate properties. It began transmitting in September the following year. After buying two further channels, Berlusconi relocated the station to central Milan in 1977 and began broadcasting over the airwaves.

* In 1978 Berlusconi founded his first media group, Fininvest, and joined Propaganda 2 masonic lodge. In the five years leading up to 1983 he earned some 113 billion Italian liras (€58.3 million). The funding sources are still unknown because of the complex system of holding companies that makes them impossible to trace, despite investigations conducted by various state attorneys.

* Fininvest soon expanded into a country-wide network of local TV stations which had similar programming, forming, in effect, a single national network. This was seen as breaching the Italian public broadcaster RAI's statutory monopoly on creating a national network which was later abolished. In 1980 Berlusconi founded Italy's first private national network, Canale 5, followed shortly thereafter by Italia 1 which was bought from the Rusconi family in 1982, and Rete 4, which was bought from Mondadori in 1984.

* Berlusconi was assisted in his successful effort to create the first and only Italian commercial TV empire by his connections to Bettino Craxi, secretary-general of the Italian Socialist Party and also prime minister of Italy at that time, whose government passed, on 20 October 1984, an emergency decree legalising the nationwide transmissions made by Berlusconi's television stations. This was because, on 16 October 1984, judges in Turin, Pescara and Rome, enforcing a law which previously restricted nationwide broadcasting to RAI, had ordered these private networks to cease transmitting.

Source Link

* Born on 29 September 1936 into a Milan family, Silvio Berlusconi started honing his business skills at a young age.

* He used his charm to sell everything from vacuum cleaners to university essays during his youth, activities complemented by stints as a crooner in nightclubs and on cruise ships. This was just the warm-up.

* In 1961, he graduated in law and started his business career in earnest, borrowing from the bank where his father worked to set up his first company, Edilnor

Source: BBC Link

Highlights

* Berlusconi was assisted in his successful effort to create the first and only Italian commercial TV empire by his connections to Bettino Craxi, secretary-general of the Italian Socialist Party and also prime minister of Italy at that time

==POLITICAL CONNECTIONS==

Sheldon Adelson

2010-09-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

* The original source of Adelson's wealth and current investments was the computer trade show COMDEX, which he and his partners developed for the computer industry; the first show was in 1979. It was the premier computer trade show through much of the 1980s and 1990s.
* In 1988, Adelson and his partners purchased the Sands Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, the former hangout of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, in order to bring Las Vegas to a new phase of business centricity through the exhibition industry. The following year, Adelson and his partners constructed the Sands Expo and Convention Center, then the only privately owned and operated convention center in the United States.
* Adelson was born and grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, a rough-and-tumble section of Boston, where his father drove a taxicab. He worked at a young age selling newspapers on local street corners and owned his first business by the time he was twelve. In the years that followed, he worked as a mortgage broker, investment adviser and financial consultant. He started a business selling toiletry kits, and in the 1960s he started a charter tours business with two friends

Highlights

* The original source of Adelson's wealth and current investments was the computer trade show COMDEX, which he and his partners developed for the computer industry; the first show was in 1979. It was the premier computer trade show through much of the 1980s and 1990s.

==BEING A PIONEER IN A VERTICAL MARKET SEGMENT AND BECOMING THE LARGEST AND MOST WELL KNOWN IN IT==

Ricardo Salinas

2010-09-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

* Ricardo Benjamín Salinas Pliego (b. in 1956) is a Mexican businessman and one of Forbes World's Richest People since 2000. He serves as President and CEO of Grupo Salinas and Grupo Elektra, two holdings with interests vested in telecommunications, media and retail stores, among those TV Azteca, Elektra, Iusacell, Unefon, and Banco Azteca.
* Grupo Salinas began as a family-owned furniture manufacturing company called Salinas & Rocha founded in 1906 by Mr. Salinas’ great-grandfather, Benjamin Salinas. In 1950, Mr. Salinas’ grandfather created Grupo Elektra, and when Ricardo Salinas became CEO of the company in 1987, Elektra averted financial distress following the devaluation of the peso. Mr. Salinas refocused Elektra on basic products: appliances, electronics, and furniture. Significantly, he developed at Elektra a vast new consumer market among Mexico’s lower middle income consumers by providing credit sales and diverse financial products and services. Grupo Elektra expanded further and became Mexico’s biggest consumer-finance company when, in 2002, it won the first banking license granted to any Mexican institution in nearly a decade. The strategy was to build new markets by creating new buying power among classes of people largely ignored by most other major Mexican businesses.

Source: Link

Highlights

* Significantly, he developed at Elektra a vast new consumer market among Mexico’s lower middle income consumers by providing credit sales and diverse financial products and services.

==IDENTIFYING A NEW, LARGE MARKET FOR AN EXISTING PRODUCT LINE==

Phil Knight

2010-09-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

* He was a middle-distance runner at the school under track coach Bill Bowerman and ran a personal best 4:10 mile, winning varsity letters for track in 1957, 1958, and 1959.
* His paper, "Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?", essentially was the premise to his foray into selling running shoes. He graduated with a Masters of Business Administration from the school in 1962.
* Knight set out on a trip around the world after graduation, during which he made a stop in Kobe, Japan in November 1962. It was there he discovered Tiger brand running shoes, manufactured in Kobe by the Onitsuka Co. So impressed with the quality and low cost, Knight made a cold call on Mr. Onitsuka, who agreed to meet with him. By the end of the meeting, Knight had secured distribution rights for the western United States for Tiger running shoes. The first Tiger samples would take more than a year to be shipped to Knight, during which time he found a job as an accountant in Portland, Oregon. When Knight finally received the shoe samples, he mailed two pairs to Bill Bowerman in Eugene in the hope of gaining a sale and an influential endorsement. To Knight's surprise, Bowerman not only ordered the Tiger shoes, he offered to become a partner with Knight and would provide some design ideas for better running shoes. The two men shook hands on a partnership on January 25, 1964, the birthdate of Blue Ribbon Sports, forerunner to Nike
* Like Fred Smith and the origins of FedEx, Philip Knight's first ideas of what would become Nike Inc. came to him while he was at school. While working on his master's at Stanford, Knight - an accomplished runner during his undergraduate days at the University of Oregon - wrote an essay that outlined a plan to overcome the monopoly Adidas had on the running shoe market. He thought the way to realize this was to employ cheap Japanese labour to make a shoe both better and cheaper.
* Blue Ribbon's success (renamed Nike in 1978) throughout the 1970s and into the '80s can largely be attributed to Knight's marketing strategy. He thought it best not to push his Nike shoes though advertising, but rather to let expert athletes endorse his product.
* Fortune smiled on Knight as his partner Bill Bowerman became the coach of the American Olympic team and many of the best performers on the team decided to shod their feet with Nikes. Of course, when the runners performed well, the shoes they wore were highlighted. Steve Prefontaine, a brash and unconventional American record-holder, became the first spokesperson for Nike shoes. After the tennis player John McEnroe hurt his ankle, he began wearing a Nike three-quarter-top shoe, and sales of that particular brand jumped from 10,000 pairs to over 1 million.

Sources: Link

Highlights

* He was a middle-distance runner at the school.
* Knight set out on a trip around the world after graduation, during which he made a stop in Kobe, Japan in November 1962. It was there he discovered Tiger brand running shoes.
* Nike's success throughout the 1970s and into the '80s can largely be attributed to Knight's marketing strategy. He thought it best not to push his Nike shoes though advertising, but rather to let expert athletes endorse his product.
* Fortune smiled on Knight as his partner Bill Bowerman became the coach of the American Olympic team and many of the best performers on the team decided to shod their feet with Nikes.

==PASSION ABOUT THE CORE ACTIVITY THAT HIS BUSINESS FOCUSSES ON==
==GOING AROUND THE WORLD AND OBSERVING WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING IN THE FIELD==
==GETTING A NEW ADVERTISING / MARKETING STRATEGY THAT GELS BRILLIANTLY WITH THE PRODUCT / SERVICE ==
==CHOOSING A BUSINESS PARTNER WHO COULD HIMSELF BECOME A CELEBRITY OR AN INDUSTRY/PRODUCT INFLUENCER==

Leonardo Del Vecchio

2010-09-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

* Leonardo Del Vecchio (born 22 May 1935, Milan, Italy) is the founder and chairman of Luxottica, a $3 billion (sales) designer and manufacturer of high-quality eyeglass frames. The firm owns the Sunglass Hut and Lenscrafters chains with a total of over 6000 stores. According to Forbes magazine, he is the second richest man in Italy, after Michele Ferrero with a net worth of 6.3 billion dollars (Forbes, 2009) and 71st in the world rankings (also Forbes 2009).
* He was born in Milan, Italy in 1935 as a child of an impoverished family. His father died five months prior to his birth. He was given to an orphanage by his mother due to the reason that his mother was unable to support him financially. He began his career as the apprentice to a tool and dye maker in Milan, but decided to turn his metalworking skills to making spectacle parts. So in 1961 he moved to Agordo in the province of Belluno, which is home to most of the Italian eyewear industry. The new company was Luxottica s.a.s., a limited partnership. In 1967 he started selling complete eyeglass frames under the Luxottica brand, which proved successful enough that by 1971 he ended the contract manufacturing business. Convinced of the need for vertical integration, in 1974 he acquired Scarrone, a distribution company. In 1981 the company set up its first international subsidiary, in Germany, the first in a rapid period of international expansion. The first of many licensing deals with a designer was struck with Armani, in 1988.

Source

*The world market for eyewear is over $100 billion (link). Who knew?

Highlights

* in 1961 he moved to Agordo in the province of Belluno, which is home to most of the Italian eyewear industry.

==MOVING THE BUSINESS HEADQUARTERS INTO THE MOST OPTIMAL LOCATION==

Vagit Alekperov

2010-09-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

* Vagit Alekperov is an Azerbaijani businessman and currently a President of the leading Russian oil company LUKOIL.
* Lukoil thus arose in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1991, set up by a small group of Soviet oil bureaucrats led by Alekperov. Another member of the group was his close friend Vitaly Schmidt, a petroleum engineer. The group forged strong bonds working in a remote drilling camp in the Siberian swamp town of Kogalym, meaning "the lake where a man died."

Link

* Lukoil thus arose in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1991, set up by a small group of Soviet oil bureaucrats led by Alekperov. Another member of the group was his close friend Vitaly Schmidt, a petroleum engineer. The group forged strong bonds working in a remote drilling camp in the Siberian swamp town of Kogalym

Roman Abramovich - A Bigtime Fraudster?

2010-09-05T08:34:00.001-07:00

Hmmm...read all about him here

Jorge Paulo Lemann

2010-09-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

Jorge Paulo Lemann (born August 26, 1939, in Rio de Janeiro) is the third wealthiest individual in Brazil (ranked number 64 in the world, number 48 by Forbes with an estimated self made fortune of USD$ 11.5 billion in 2010.

Jorge Paulo Lemann was born in Brazil during 1939 to Swiss immigrants. He received his Bachelors degree from Harvard University in Economics in 1961. From 1961 to 1962 he worked as trainee at Credit Suisse.

In 1971 he and three partners founded the Brazilian investment banking firm Banco Garantia. Undaunted by a horrific market crash that came only weeks later, Lemann was eventually able to build Garantia into one of the country's most prestigious and innovative investment banks, described in Forbes as "a Brazilian version of Goldman Sachs."

Later he and his partners bought control of a Brazilian brewery that eventually became AmBev. In 2003 AmBev had a pretax profit margin of 35 percent on sales of USD $2.7 billion. It controlled 65 percent of the Brazilian beer market and almost 80 percent of Argentina's, with monopoly positions in Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Paulo_Lemann

John Paulson - Riches from Hedge Funds

2010-09-05T08:23:00.000-07:00

* Paulson was born in Queens, New York, the son of Jacqueline and Alfred Paulson, a chief financial officer for Ruder Finn. Paulson attended the Whitestone Hebrew Centre (a United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism school) in Queens. He received his bachelor's degree in finance from New York University’s College of Business and Public Administration (now called NYU Stern School), where he graduated first in his class. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was designated a Baker Scholar, the school's top academic honor, for graduating in the top 5 percent. Paulson began his career at Boston Consulting Group before leaving to join Odyssey Partners, working under Leon Levy. He later worked in the mergers and acquisitions group at Bear Stearns. Prior to founding his own firm, he was a partner at mergers arbitrage firm Gruss Partners LP. In 1994, he founded his own hedge fund with $2 million and two employees (himself and an assistant).
* Paulson & Co., Inc. had assets under management (as of June 1, 2007) of $12.5 billion (95% from institutions), which leapt to $36 billion as of November 2008.[4]In 2007 alone he made $15 billion for his firm. Under his direction, Paulson & Co has capitalized on the problems in the foreclosure and mortgage backed securities (MBS) markets. In 2008 he decided to start a new fund that would capitalize on Wall Street's capital problems by lending money to investment banks and other hedge funds currently feeling the pressure of the more than $345 billion of write downs resulting from under-performing assets linked to the housing market

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paulson

Donald Bren - Real Estate Mogul

2010-09-05T08:15:00.000-07:00

* Bren is the son of Hollywood producer Milton Bren and his wife, civic leader Marion (Newbert) Bren.
* Bren built his first house in Newport Beach with a $10,000 loan in 1958. He also began his business career in 1958, when he founded the Bren Company, which built homes in Orange County, California. In 1963, he and two others started the Mission Viejo Company (MVC) to plan and develop the city of Mission Viejo, California as 10,000 acres (40 km2).

Jeffrey Bezos

2010-09-05T06:09:00.000-07:00

* Bezos' maternal grandfather was a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. He retired early to the ranch, where Bezos spent most summers of his youth, working with his grandfather at the enormously varied tasks essential to the operation. At an early age, he displayed a striking mechanical aptitude -as a toddler, he tried dismantling his crib with a screwdriver
* Bezos showed intense and varied scientific interests at an early age. He rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room and maintain his privacy. He converted his parents' garage into a laboratory for his science projects
* He entered Princeton University, planning to study physics, but soon returned to his love of computers and graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Bezos was awarded an honorary doctorate in Science and Technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008.
* After graduating from Princeton, Bezos worked on Wall Street in the computer science field. Then he worked on building a network for international trade for a company known as Fitel. Then Bezos worked for Bankers Trust, becoming a vice-president. Later on he also worked in computer science for D. E. Shaw & Co.
* 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.
* From the beginning, Bezos sought to increase market share as quickly as possible, at the expense of profits.
* Through each round of expansion, Jeff Bezos continually emphasized the "Six Core Values: customer obsession, ownership, bias for action, frugality, high hiring bar and innovation."
* With the introduction of the Kindle, Amazon quickly captured 95 percent of the U.S. market for books in electronic form -- e-books.

References

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos
* http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/bez0bio-1

Highlights

* Bezos spent most summers of his youth, working with his grandfather at the enormously varied tasks. At an early age, he displayed a striking mechanical aptitude -as a toddler, he tried dismantling his crib with a screwdriver
* One day, 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.
* From the beginning, Bezos sought to increase market share as quickly as possible, at the expense of profits.

==HAVING A TINKERER'S MINDSET==
==LOOKING FOR TRENDS THAT INDICATE PHENOMENAL MARKET GROWTH==
==REVIEWING AND ANALYSING POSSIBLE BUSINESSES BEFORE GETTING IN==
==FOCUSSING ON BECOMING THE LARGEST==

Mikhail Fridman

2010-09-05T03:46:00.000-07:00

* Fridman has the instincts, and risk-taking nerve, of a born entrepreneur. Once a student at the Moscow Institute of Steel & Alloys, he got his real education as an organizer of the business cooperatives permitted by Mikhail Gorbachev. With two schoolmates -- both of whom are still partners in Alfa Group -- Fridman created a co-op to wash windows in the late 1980s. He has been creating and consolidating new businesses ever since. (link)
* Mikhail Fridman is famous for his strong Kremlin connections, lives in Moscow, and he made his fortune from oil and banking
* Mikhail Fridman has long been known for his ability to subtly lead corporate conflicts. And, he has always remained a winner

Highlights

* He got his real education as an organizer of the business cooperatives permitted by Mikhail Gorbachev.
* Famous for his strong Kremlin connections
* Has long been known for his ability to subtly lead corporate conflicts.

==POLITICAL CONNECTIONS==
==GETTING TO DO THE RIGHT KIND OF ACTIVITY AT THE RIGHT TIME==
==ABILITY TO LEAD CONFLICTS, ESP CORPORATE CONFLICTS==

Ravi and Shashi Ruia

2010-09-05T03:09:00.000-07:00

* Ravi Ruia is the Vice Chairman of Essar Group. Coming from meager beginnings ,he is a Mechanical Engineer by profession and passed out of Anna University in Chennai, India . He has played an important role in steering the Essar Group to its pre-eminent position.
* The Ruia family’s origins are in Rajasthan. Sometime in the 19th century, it moved to Mumbai and set up its own business. In 1956, Shri Nandkishore Ruia, father to Shri Shashi and Ravi Ruia, moved to Chennai, capital of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, to begin independent business activities. He mentored his two sons in the intricacies of business. When Shri Nandkishore Ruia passed away in 1969, the brothers laid the foundation of the Group.Ravi Ruia
* The Essar Group began its operations with the construction of an outer breakwater in Chennai port. It quickly moved to capitalise on every emerging business opportunity, becoming India’s first private company to buy a tanker in 1976. The Group also invested in a diverse shipping fleet and oil rigs, when the Government of India opened up the shipping and drilling businesses to private players in the 1980s.
* Then, in the 1990s, Essar began its steelmaking business by setting up India’s first sponge iron plant in Hazira, a coastal town in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The Group went on to build a pellet plant in Visakhapatnam and eventually a fully integrated steel plant in Hazira.
* Through the 1990s, with the gradual liberalisation of the Indian economy, Essar seized every opportunity that came its way. It diversified its shipping fleet, started oil & gas exploration and production, laid the foundation of its oil refinery at Vadinar, Gujarat, and set up a power plant near the steel complex in Hazira. The Construction business helped the Group build most of its business assets. Essar also entered the GSM telephony business, establishing India’s first mobile phone service in Delhi (branded Essar Cellphone) with Swiss PTT as the joint venture partner. Ravi Ruia
* The 21st century for the Essar Group has been all about consolidating and growing the businesses, with M&As, new revenue streams and strategic geographical expansion.

Lnk
* The Ruias have been in business since the 1800s. Essar Chairman Shashi Ruia recently remarked about the entrepreneurial spirit that runs in the family: 'I am not just an MBA, but also an MBB (Marwari by birth).'

Highlights

* The Essar Group began its operations with the construction of an outer breakwater in Chennai port. It quickly moved to capitalise on every emerging business opportunity, becoming India’s first private company to buy a tanker in 1976. The Group also invested in a diverse shipping fleet and oil rigs, when the Government of India opened up the shipping and drilling businesses to private players in the 1980s.

==MOVING QUICKLY IN A NASCENT MARKET TO ESTABLISH CLEAR LEADERSHIP==

Birgit Rausing

2010-09-05T03:04:00.000-07:00

* Dr Birgit Rausing (born 1924) is a Swedish art historian and philanthropist. After death of her husband Gad Rausing in 2000, with her 3 children, inherited packaging giant Tetra Laval. In 1944 her father-in-law founded Tetra Pak, which revolutionized the packaging of liquids such as juices and milk
* The firm revolutionized the storing of liquids, such as juices and milk, by developing lightweight packaging that preserves the nutritional value and taste of products.

Highlights

* The firm revolutionized the storing of liquids, such as juices and milk, by developing lightweight packaging that preserves the nutritional value and taste of products.

Mikhail Prokhorov

2010-09-05T01:02:00.000-07:00

* In 1989, Prokhorov graduated with honors from the Finance Academy under the Government of RF, known at the time as the Moscow Finance Institute. From 1989 to 1992, Prokhorov worked in a management position at the International Bank for Economic Cooperation, and afterwards shortly served as head of Management Board of the International Finance Company (MFK). In 1993, aged 28, during the largely un-regulated privatization of former state-controlled industries after the fall of Communism, Prokhorov (together with Vladimir Potanin) engineered the acquisition of Norilsk Nickel by Onexim Bank, of which he was then chairman of the board
* His offical web site - link
* His mother, Tamara, was a chemical engineer and his father, Dmitry, was head of the international department for the Soviet Sport Committee, which greatly influenced his love of sports from an early age. While still a student, Mikhail earned his first money unloading railway cars, and he then established his first business venture stone-washing blue jeans
* he contrived to be born at the right time and in the correct family, thus unable to fully take advantage of the troubled times of great economic reforms. The family was able to give him all that is necessary for a successful career. Prokhorov's father worked as head of the Laboratory Glavprofobra, the mother was in charge of the department of polymers at the Moscow Institute of chemical materials, so the preparation for entrance exams to the prestigious Moscow Institute of Finance at the Faculty of International Economic Relations (IER), Prokhorov was no problem.
* It would have worked as a financier Prokhorov in the banking system, if not meeting with Vladimir Potanin, to budding entrepreneurs. Founder of the company "Interros" and the future oligarch Prokhorov came to the bank for the money. As it turned out, in addition to the loan he received a kindred spirit. Potanin and Mikhail Prokhorov as business partners met in a very good time. His career success Prokhorov required financial genius of his partner Potanin. In spring 1995, he developed a unique pattern on the yield of credit government bail shares of privatized enterprises. April 13, 1996 there was a turning point in the fate of Prokhorov. Order of the Government he was appointed a member of the Board of Directors of the then state of Norilsk Nickel, the producer of nickel and platinum group metals. Next Onexim Bank acquired RAO Norilsk Nickel, the oil company Sidanco, a piece of the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Combine and the greater part of the North-Western Shipping Company. All of these "flagships of the economy" have cost the company Prokhorov and Potanin about a third of its real value, making friends, businessmen richest men in Russia. (link)

Highlights

* In 1993, aged 28, during the largely un-regulated privatization of former state-controlled industries after the fall of Communism, Prokhorov (together with Vladimir Potanin) engineered the acquisition of Norilsk Nickel by Onexim Bank, of which he was then chairman of the board
* He contrived to be born at the right time and in the correct family, thus unable to fully take advantage of the troubled times of great economic reforms.
* His career success Prokhorov required financial genius of his partner Potanin.

==BENEFITTING FROM ECONOMIC AND REGULATORY DISCONTINUITIES ESP DURING NASCENT STAGES OF A MARKET==
==BORN IN THE RIGHT TIME IN THE CORRECT FAMILY==
==HAVING A PARTNER WHO IS A FINANCIAL GENIUS==

Michael Dell

2010-09-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

* The son of an orthodontist and a stockbroker, Dell attended Herod Elementary School in Houston, Texas. In a bid to enter business early, he applied to take a high school equivalency exam at age eight. In his early teens, he invested his earnings from part-time jobs in stocks and precious metals.
* Dell purchased his first calculator at age seven and encountered his first teletype machine in junior high, which he programmed after school. At age 15, after playing with computers at Radio Shack, he got his first computer, an Apple II, which he promptly disassembled to see how it worked
* Dell attended Memorial High School in Houston, selling subscriptions to the Houston Post in the summer. While making cold calls, Dell observed that newlyweds and people moving into new homes were most likely to buy a subscription. He targeted this demographic group by collecting names from marriage and mortgage applications. Dell earned $18,000 that year, exceeding the annual income of his history and economics teacher
* While a pre-med student at the University of Texas at Austin, Dell started an informal business upgrading computers in room 2713 of the Dobie Center residential building. He then applied for a vendor license to bid on contracts for the State of Texas, winning bids by not having the overhead of a computer store
* In January 1984, Dell banked on his conviction that the potential cost savings of a manufacturer selling PCs directly had enormous advantages over the conventional indirect retail channel. In January 1984, Dell registered his company as "PC's Limited". Operating out of a condominium, the business sold between $50,000 and $80,000 in upgraded PCs, kits, and add-on components. In May, Dell incorporated the company as "Dell Computer Corporation" and relocated it to a business center in North Austin. The company employed a few order takers, a few more people to fulfill them, and, as Dell recalled, a manufacturing staff "consisting of three guys with screwdrivers sitting at six-foot tables." The venture's capitalization cost was $1,000
* "The reason why I have more business and personal growth in 30 days than most people have all year is I TAKE 3x the ACTION and MAKE 4x the AMOUNT OF MISTAKES."
* Michael Dell’s office has chairs only for visitors. Dell works standing, appropriately enough for the CEO of a manufacturing company that has slashed inventory turnover to an astonishing seven days, compared with 80 days or more for much of his competition. (In the computer industry, inventory loses 1 percent of its value every week that it sits on the shelf; Dell’s world-beating inventory management is thus critical to the company’s bottom line.)
* When he talks about his beginnings as a University of Texas computer wonk, you realize that it all started with the basic entrepreneurial act of spotting a market niche. “At the root of it, I was probably just opportunistic,” Dell says. “I had and still have a great interest in computers. There was a business opportunity [with] this product that I really liked, and it all kind of lined up together. “I saw that you’d buy a PC for about $3,000, and inside that PC was about $600 worth of parts,” he continues. “IBM would buy most of these parts from other companies, assemble them, and sell the computer to a dealer for $2,000. Then the dealer, who knew very little about selling or supporting computers, would sell it for $3,000, which was even more outrageous.”
* When asked whether he understood at 19 how he was revolutionizing the marketplace, Dell responds, “Well, we started the company by building to the customer’s order. And, interestingly enough, we didn’t do it because we saw some massive paradigm in the future. Basically, we just didn’t have any capital (to mass produce).” So Dell caught a lucky break in the beginning, but he hardly abandoned his business model once he got a few nickels together. Instead, he expanded it on a mass scale, using information technology to customize millions of computers individually.
* One hundred years ago, Thomas Alva Edison told SUCCESS magazine that the first requisite of success was the ability to concentrate on a single problem. “If you get up at 7 and go to bed at 11, you have put in 16 good hours, and it is certain with most men that they have been doing something all the time,” Edison said. “The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things, and I do it about one.” Dell and Edison are kindred spirits in this regard. For the past 14 years, Michael Dell has concentrated on building better computers and selling them at a lower price.

Source

Highlights

* Dell purchased his first calculator at age seven and encountered his first teletype machine in junior high, which he programmed after school. At age 15 he got his first computer, an Apple II, which he promptly disassembled to see how it worked
* Dell started selling subscriptions to the Houston Post in the summer while in school. While making cold calls, Dell observed that newlyweds and people moving into new homes were most likely to buy a subscription. He targeted this demographic group by collecting names from marriage and mortgage applications. Dell earned $18,000 that year, exceeding the annual income of his history and economics teacher
* In January 1984, Dell banked on his conviction that the potential cost savings of a manufacturer selling PCs directly had enormous advantages over the conventional indirect retail channel.
* "The reason why I have more business and personal growth in 30 days than most people have all year is I TAKE 3x the ACTION and MAKE 4x the AMOUNT OF MISTAKES."
* Michael Dell’s office has chairs only for visitors. Dell works standing, appropriately enough for the CEO of a manufacturing company that has slashed inventory turnover to an astonishing seven days
* When he talks about his beginnings as a University of Texas computer wonk, you realize that it all started with the basic entrepreneurial act of spotting a market niche.
* One hundred years ago, Thomas Alva Edison told SUCCESS magazine that the first requisite of success was the ability to concentrate on a single problem. “If you get up at 7 and go to bed at 11, you have put in 16 good hours, and it is certain with most men that they have been doing something all the time,” Edison said. “The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things, and I do it about one.”

==GETTING ACQUAINTED TO A TECH OR A PRODUCT VERY EARLY IN LIFE==
==OBSERVING TRENDS AND BEHAVIOURS==
==TAKING MORE ACTIONS EVEN IF IT MEANS MAKING MORE MISTAKES==
==SPOTTING A MARKET OPPORTUNITY EITHER IN TERMS OF PRODUCT OR PRICE OR WHATEVER==
==FOCUSSING ON ONE SINGLE THING 24 HOURS A DAY AND DOING IT REALLY, REALLY WELL==

Paul Allen

2010-09-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

* Allen attended Lakeside School, a private school in Seattle, and befriended Bill Gates, who was two years his junior but shared a common enthusiasm for computers. They used Lakeside's teletype terminal to develop their programming skills on several time-sharing computer systems.[8] After graduation Allen attended Washington State University but dropped out after two years in order to work as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston, placing him near his old friend again. Allen later convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard University in order to create Microsoft.
* Allen spearheaded a deal for Microsoft to purchase a Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) written by Tim Paterson who, at the time, was employed at Seattle Computer Products. As a result of this transaction, Microsoft was able to secure a contract to supply the DOS that would eventually run on IBM's PC line. This contract with IBM was the watershed in Microsoft history that led to Allen and Gates's fabulous wealth.
* A good bio of PA - http://www.thocp.net/biographies/allen_paul.htm

Highlight

* Allen spearheaded a deal for Microsoft to purchase a Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) written by Tim Paterson who, at the time, was employed at Seattle Computer Products.

==A GOOD EYE FOR SPOTTING BUYING OPPORTUNITIES==
==GOOD DEAL MAKER==

George Soros

2010-09-04T06:42:00.000-07:00

* George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. (Wikipedia, attr to Paul Volcker).
* Soros was thirteen years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany took military control over Hungary.[15] Soros worked for the Jewish Council,[8] which had been established during the Nazi occupation of Hungary to forcibly carry out Nazi and Hungarian government anti-Jewish measures
* To avoid his son's being apprehended by the Nazis, Soros's father paid a Ministry of Agriculture employee to have Soros spend the summer of 1944 living with him and posing as the godson. Young Soros had to hide his Jewishness even as the official was overseeing the confiscation of Jewish property.
* In 1945, Soros survived the battle of Budapest in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city. Soros first traded currencies and jewelry during the Hungarian hyperinflation of 1945–1946. Soros emigrated to England in 1947 and graduated from the London School of Economics in 1952. While a student of the philosopher Karl Popper, Soros worked as a railway porter and as a waiter
* On Black Wednesday (September 16, 1992), Soros's fund sold short more than $10 billion worth of pounds sterling[citation needed], profiting from the Bank of England's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency. Finally, the Bank of England withdrew the currency from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound sterling, and Soros earned an estimated US$ 1.1 billion in the process. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England." In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.4 billion. The Times of Monday, October 26, 1992, quoted Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell." Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound. "Soros' contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position." - Wikipedia
* George Soros was a master at translating broad-brush economic trends into highly leveraged, killer plays in bonds and currencies. As an investor, Soros was a short-term speculator, making huge bets on the directions of financial markets. He believed that financial markets can best be described as chaotic. The prices of securities and currencies depend on human beings, or the traders - both professional and non-professional - who buy and sell these assets. These persons often act out based on emotion, rather than logical considerations. He also believed that market participants influenced one another and moved in herds. He said that most of the time he moved with the herd, but always watched for an opportunity to get out in front and "make a killing." How could he tell when the time was right? Soros has said that he would have an instinctive physical reaction about when to buy and sell, making is strategy a difficult model to emulate. ( link )
* From my reading, it appears that there is no major methodology that is the secret to Soros' trading success, but it looks like more like accepting quickly when he is wrong and getting out damn fast...naturally, he is also right many times...so, on the average, when he is right he makes a lot of money but when he is wrong, because of his open mindedness to accepting his mistake he cuts his losses to bare minimums...at least this is what I understood

Highlights

* George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. (Wikipedia, attr to Paul Volcker).
* On Black Wednesday (September 16, 1992), Soros's fund sold short more than $10 billion worth of pounds sterling[citation needed], profiting from the Bank of England's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency.
* George Soros was a master at translating broad-brush economic trends into highly leveraged, killer plays in bonds and currencies. As an investor, Soros was a short-term speculator, making huge bets on the directions of financial markets.
He said that most of the time he moved with the herd, but always watched for an opportunity to get out in front and "make a killing."
* From my reading, it appears that there is no major methodology that is the secret to Soros' trading success, but it looks like more like accepting quickly when he is wrong and getting out damn fast...

==QUICK TO ACCEPT MISTAKES AND TAKE ACTION==
==ABILITY TO FORECAST SHORT TERM TRENDS AND MOVING QUICKLY==
==TRANSLATING BROAD ECONOMIC TRENDS INTO HIGHLY LEVERAGED, KILLER PLAYS==

Robert Kuok

2010-09-04T04:46:00.000-07:00

* Kuok is media shy and discreet; most of his businesses are privately held by him or his family. Apart from a multitude of businesses in Malaysia, his companies have investments in many countries throughout Asia. His business interests range from sugarcane plantations (Perlis Plantations Bhd), sugar refineries, flour milling, animal feed, oil, mining, finance, hotels, properties, trading, freight and publishing. He was a student from the prestigious school Raffles Institution.
* Kuok and his two brothers founded Kuok Brothers Sdn Bhd in 1949, trading agricultural commodities. Under the new post-colonial government, Kuok started in the sugar business alongside the government. In 1961, he made a coup by buying cheap sugar from India before the prices shot up. He continued to invest heavily in sugar refineries, controlled 80% of the Malaysian sugar market with production of 1.5 million tonnes, equivalent to 10% of world production, and so earned his nickname "Sugar King of Asia".
* Kuok's notes on business - very good points - link
* "To be a successful businessman, I think you really need to brush all your senses every morning, just as you brush your teeth. I coined the phrase “honing your senses” in business: your vision, hearing, sense of smell, touch and taste. All these senses come in very useful."
* "When I hire staff I look for honest, hardworking, intelligent people. When I look candidates in the eye, they must appear very honest to me. I do not look for MBAs or exceptional students. You may hire a brilliant man, summa cum laude, first-class honours, but if his mind is not a fair one or if he has a warped attitude in life, does brilliance really matter?"
* "The way forward for this world is through capitalism. Even China has come to realise it. But it’s equally true that capitalism, if allowed to snowball along unchecked, can in many ways become destructive. Capitalism needs to be inspected under a magnifying glass once a day, a super-magnifying glass once a week, and put through the cleaning machine once a month."
* And what was the secret of successful business leadership? "Like Genghis Khan in his best days, you have to share the spoils of victory," he replied. - link
* "A nimble businessman gets very wealthy when there are political developments," he says. "In every crisis, big fortunes are made."
"Back in the early 1980s," says Mulcahy, "when other overseas Chinese businessmen were currying favour with Beijing by setting up foundations building hospitals and schools in their home towns, Kuok was already making real investments." And when foreign entrepreneurs and visitors steered clear in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, Kuok continued to finance his $480-million investment in Beijing's World Trade Center, even though rooms in his luxury Shangri-La hotel at the Center's hub were going begging for $30 a night. "The Chinese remember that," says Robert Hutchinson, director of marketing for Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts. "Obviously, it gives him a competitive advantage."
So it's unsurprising that nobody gets better locations in China for his buildings than Kuok.
* His father, an immigrant to the British colony from southern China's Fujian province, was a comfortably-off commodities trader who sent all three of his sons to private, British-run schools. At Raffles College in Singapore, one of Kuok's fellow students was Lee Kuan Yew, the future prime minister of Singapore.
* Robert Kuok Hock Nien's education was curtailed by Japan's invasion of Singapore in 1942, but he turned the occupation to his advantage by getting a job with a Mitsubishi trading company and learning fluent Japanese. After the war, Kuok remained aloof from the Malayan independence movement. When his younger brother, a prominent Communist guerrilla, was ambushed by British colonial forces in 1952 and fatally wounded, Kuok moved to London to master the intricacies of commodities trading.
It was as a commodities broker that Kuok first gained prominence. By the early 1970s he was known as the Sugar King because from time to time he controlled up to 10% of the world sugar market. His commercial skills took him into new ventures, including sugar plantations and refineries in Malaysia, where he enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the domestic market. He then diversified into palm oil, chemicals, shipping, real estate, and hotels throughout south-east Asia.
* After founding the Kuok Brothers Sdn Bhd, Kuok first started investing in the sugar refinery business. In 1957, Malaya achieved independence from its English colonial master. Kuok immediately seized the opportunity to swiftly establish his business network throughout Malaysia, based on an end-to-end (raw materials Ú processing Ú distribution) business model. He also mastered the intricacies of commodities trading in London in the 50s. By the 70s, he was known as the "Sugar King" as he controlled up to 10percent of the global sugar market.
* Since the 60s, Robert Kuok Hock Nien has relied heavily on his gentlemanly way of doing business to become a mover and shaker in industry. He was fast in spotting
opportunities from at home and abroad, and used his excellent connections
with government and industry to rapidly scale up his empire. In this way, he forged many strategic alliances with other parties. With the government, he joint hands to form a shipping company, and later built hotels, office buildings and convention centres. With partners, he founded banks. Thus, through business savvy, open-mindedness and his links, he has diversified into almost everything under the sun.
* Secret of His Success - When asked this, Kuoks aides will invariably say: Mr Kuok is a true gentleman. He has the power to make his opponents yield willingly, and is a genuinely amicable man. And he makes it a personal effort to ensure that all his employees embrace this gentlemanly way of conducting business. Kuok s gentlemanly ways are also well-recognised among his peers. He has many a time bailed out his contemporaries in distress, and furthermore, he does not seek the limelight, preferring to live a life of thrift and simplicity, winning him accolades and admiration near and far.

Highlights

* In 1961, he made a coup by buying cheap sugar from India before the prices shot up.
* "To be a successful businessman, I think you really need to brush all your senses every morning, just as you brush your teeth. I coined the phrase “honing your senses” in business: your vision, hearing, sense of smell, touch and taste. All these senses come in very useful."
* And what was the secret of successful business leadership? "Like Genghis Khan in his best days, you have to share the spoils of victory,"
* "A nimble businessman gets very wealthy when there are political developments," he says. "In every crisis, big fortunes are made."
* When foreign entrepreneurs and visitors steered clear in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, Kuok continued to finance his $480-million investment in Beijing's World Trade Center. "The Chinese remember that," says Robert Hutchinson, director of marketing for Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts. "Obviously, it gives him a competitive advantage." So it's unsurprising that nobody gets better locations in China for his buildings than Kuok.
* At Raffles College in Singapore, one of Kuok's fellow students was Lee Kuan Yew, the future prime minister of Singapore.
* In 1957, Malaya achieved independence from its English colonial master. Kuok immediately seized the opportunity to swiftly establish his business network throughout Malaysia, based on an end-to-end (raw materials Ú processing Ú distribution) business model.
* Since the 60s, Robert Kuok Hock Nien has relied heavily on his gentlemanly way of doing business to become a mover and shaker in industry.
* He was fast in spotting opportunities from at home and abroad, and used his excellent connections with government and industry to rapidly scale up his empire.
* Mr Kuok is a true gentleman. He has the power to make his opponents yield willingly, and is a genuinely amicable man.
* And he makes it a personal effort to ensure that all his employees embrace this gentlemanly way of conducting business. Kuok s gentlemanly ways are also well-recognised among his peers. He has many a time bailed out his contemporaries in distress

==BIG GAINS BY EXPLOITING SHORT TERM PRICE / ARBITRAGE OPPORTUNITIES==
==INVESTING HEAVILY IN A MASS MARKET PRODUCT SEGMENT AND CAPTURING HUGE MARKET SHARE==
==BRUSHING ALL YOUR SENSES EVERYDAY AND KEEPING THEM ABSOLUTELY ACTIVE==
==SHARING SPOILS WITH COLLEAGUES==
==NIMBLE BUSINESSMAN GETS VERY WEALTHY WHEN THERE ARE BIG POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS==
==MAKING BIG FORTUNES FROM CRISES==
==INVESTING IN A COUNTRY WHEN THE OTHERS ARE RUNNING AWAY FROM IT==
==HAVING BIG POLITICAL CONNECTIONS==
==GENTLEMANLY WAY OF DOING BUSINESS==
==HELPS OTHERS, EVEN COMPETITORS IN A PERSONAL WAY==
==SPOTTING OPPORTUNITIES EARLY AND MOVING IN==

Steve Ballmer

2010-09-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

* In 1977, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a B.A. in mathematics and economics. While in college, Ballmer managed the football team, worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. He then worked for two years as an assistant product manager at Procter & Gamble, where he shared an office with Jeffrey R. Immelt, who would later become CEO of General Electric. In 1980, he dropped out from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business to join Microsoft.
* Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980[8], and became Microsoft's 24th employee, the first business manager hired by Gates. Ballmer loved working in Microsoft.[9] He was initially offered a salary of $50,000 as well as a percentage of ownership of the company. When Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, Ballmer owned 8 percent of the company.
* Steve Jobs was MS's first business manager
* In a recent interview for Fast Company magazine, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, emphasized the importance of patience for succeeding in business. He explained that products and businesses go through three phases: vision, patience, and execution. And he said the patience stage is the toughest and most uncomfortable.
* Steve Ballmer's secret to kicking ass - link

Highlights

* Steve Ballmer was MS's first business manager
* In a recent interview he emphasized the importance of patience for succeeding in business. He explained that products and businesses go through three phases: vision, patience, and execution. And he said the patience stage is the toughest and most uncomfortable.
* While in college, Ballmer lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates.

==BEING AN EARLY EMPLOYEE OF A STARTUP THAT BECOMES VERY LARGE LATER==
==STUDYING WITH FUTURE BIG HONCHOS==
==VISION, PATIENCE AND EXECUTION==

Vladimir Lisin - Russian Rags to Riches

2010-09-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

* The businessman owes his wealth to the Novolipetsk steel mill, one of the world's largest. He also owns an electricity firm.
* Lisin got his first job in 1975 as a mechanic in a Soviet coalmine. He studied at Siberia's Metallurgy Institute and took a job as a steelworker. In 1992 he joined a group of tenacious traders, the Trans-World Group, who won control of Russia's steel and aluminium industry. When the partners split in 2000, Lisin received 13% of the firm and later won a controlling share.
* The secret of Lisin's success, Finans suggested, has been to work hard and stay out of politics. The oligarch has avoided the fate of Mikhail Khordorkovsky, formerly Russia's richest man, who has been in prison since 2003 after challenging the then president, Vladimir Putin. Lisin has also snubbed Moscow's VIP party scene.
* Forbes calls him a "proletarian success story." He worked his way up from the crappiest job imaginable (a mechanic in a coal mine) to become minister of metallurgy in 1991. In the 90s, he managed a bunch of factories that he privatized with a group of other tough coal miner types; together they formed Trans World Group. In 2000, he wrestled a majority stake in Novolipetsk, one of Russia's largest steel mills. In 2005, he bought 48.8% of St. Petersburg's port in an attempt to integrate all aspects of his raw mineral business.

Highlights

* The secret of Lisin's success has been to work hard and stay out of politics. The oligarch has avoided the fate of Mikhail Khordorkovsky, formerly Russia's richest man, who has been in prison since 2003 after challenging the then president, Vladimir Putin. Lisin has also snubbed Moscow's VIP party scene.

==FOCUSSING ON BUSINESS AND KEEPING OUT OF PARTY CIRCLES AND POLITICS==

Azim Premji

2010-09-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

* His father M. H. Premji owned the Western India Vegetable Product Company (which later became Wipro Ltd.) which made hydrogenated vegetable oils and fats. His grandfather was the rice king of Burma. His father had declined an invitation from Muhammed Ali Jinnah to go to Pakistan.
* When Azim Premji occupied the hot seat, Wipro dealt in hydrogenated cooking fats and later diversified to bakery fats, ethnic ingredient based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products, and hydraulic cylinders. Thereafter Premji made a focused shift from soaps to software
* In the 1980s Wipro entered the IT field, taking advantage of the expulsion of IBM from the Indian market in 1975. Thus, Wipro became involved in manufacturing computer hardware, software development and related items, under a special license from Sentinel. As a result, the $1.5 million company in hydrogenated cooking fats grew within a few years to a $662 million diversified, integrated corporation in services, medical systems, technology products and consumer items with offices worldwide

Highlights

* In the 1980s Wipro entered the IT field, taking advantage of the expulsion of IBM from the Indian market in 1975.

==TAKING ADVANTAGE OF A MARKET VACUUM==

Michele Ferrero - King of Chocolates

2010-09-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

* In Italy, after the war, candy and confections were in short supply and were purchased mainly for special occasions from the local sweet shop. It was in the small town of Alba, in northwestern Italy, that master confectioner Pietro Ferrero (Michele's dad) developed a system that enabled him to mass-produce high quality confectionery and offer them to consumers at reasonable prices.

* The first of the Ferrero products was Pasta Gianduja, a chocolate-hazelnut spread that, re-named Nutella, was destined to become the highest selling sweet spread in the world. Since that first successful venture, Ferrero has gone on to introduce many of the best known confectionery brands in the world.

* The roots of this success can be traced back to the 1940s, when Michele’s parents, Piera and Pietro Ferrero, succeeded in turning their pastry shop into a factory. This first turning point was achieved thanks to products “invented” by Pietro Ferrero and his young son Michele using locally grown hazelnuts; and to the successful sales talent of Giovanni Ferrero, Pietro’s younger brother.

* Nutella, the company's flagship chocolate appears to be a national celebrity.

* The company's operations are hushed in secrecy and apparently, the machinery used for making Nutella was entirely engineered and made by the company itself.

* Ferrero is over 80 years, but he maintains a private lab at Monte Carlo where he still sits and researches on new (choco) products...he appears to love this kind of stuff - a good link

* Nutella even has a day of its own - Feb 6 - link

Highlights

* In Italy, after the war, candy and confections were in short supply and were purchased mainly for special occasions from the local sweet shop. It was in the small town of Alba, in northwestern Italy, that master confectioner Pietro Ferrero (Michele's dad) developed a system that enabled him to mass-produce high quality confectionery and offer them to consumers at reasonable prices.

* The roots of this success can be traced back to the 1940s, when Michele’s parents, Piera and Pietro Ferrero, succeeded in turning their pastry shop into a factory. This first turning point was achieved thanks to products “invented” by Pietro Ferrero and his young son Michele using locally grown hazelnuts; and to the successful sales talent of Giovanni Ferrero, Pietro’s younger brother.

* Ferrero is over 80 years, but he maintains a private lab at Monte Carlo where he still sits and researches on new (choco) products...he appears to love this kind of stuff

==ABILITY TO MASS PRODUCE SOMETHING THAT WAS CUSTOM MADE EARLIER AND THUS SELL AT LOWER PRICES==
==TALENT AND PASSION FOR INNOVATIONS IN THE PRODUCT==

Sergey Brin and Larry Page

2010-08-31T10:23:00.001-07:00

* Nice quotes from Larry Page - here

* Google co-founder Larry Page revealed in his 2009 commencement address to the University of Michigan that the basic platform for google was based on a sleep dream he had in college. Page, then 23, took the source material of his dream and worked it and worked it until it became a minor internet player. Page told the college grads that he had a "vivid dream" at age 23 that woke him up in the middle of the night that he just had to write down. "When I suddenly woke up," said Page in his address, "I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and... I grabbed a pen and started writing!" (Source)

* Google actually relies on our users to help with our marketing. We have a very high percentage of our users who often tell others about our search engine.
Sergey Brin

Highlights

* Google co-founder Larry Page revealed in his 2009 commencement address to the University of Michigan that the basic platform for google was based on a sleep dream he had in college. Page, then 23, took the source material of his dream and worked it and worked it until it became a minor internet player. Page told the college grads that he had a "vivid dream" at age 23 that woke him up in the middle of the night that he just had to write down.

==IF YOU LITERALLY GET SOME IDEA IN THE DREAM, IT IS POSSIBLY WORTH PURSUING==

Charles Koch (and David Koch)

2010-08-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

* Father, Fred C. Koch (d. 1967), invented method of turning heavy oil into gasoline. Sons Charles, David, Frederick and William inherited Koch Industries after father's death. Charles and David bought out William and Frederick for $1.1 billion in 1983. Today company has stakes in pipelines, refineries, fertilizer, fibers and polymers, forest and consumer products, chemical technology.
* Studied nuclear and chemical engineering at MIT; cofounder of conservative think tank Cato Institute.
* Much of Koch Industries' success can be traced to Mr. Koch's interest in
and commitment to scientific and social progress, which led to the
development and implementation of the Market-Based Management
business philosophy. The concepts and practice of MBM are described in
Mr. Koch’s book, “The Science of Success,” published in February 2007
by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
* Charles and his brother David do not appear to be the darlings of media, not by a long shot - see here
* Central to the acquisitions and to Koch's growth philosophy, Koch said, was his commitment to "Market-Based Management," a term he uses to describe encouragement of entrepreneurship within his company. The thinking behind MBM reflects the free-market philosophies of the economic theorists Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Joseph Schumpeter, and others who believed that encouraging entrepreneurial behavior and individual responsibility would make societies wealthier.
* You probably haven’t heard of Koch Industries, largely because it doesn’t trade on the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq. It is a private company, and Koch has no plans to change its status. In fact, at the luncheon last week, Charles Koch confessed that being private is one of the secrets to his company’s success. “Most publicly traded companies focus on short-term quarterly earnings reports and, therefore, have a hard time maximizing long-term value. If we had been a public company, I would have been fired long ago!”
* Koch started out as an oil & gas firm, but has since expanded into chemicals, plastics, fertilizers, ranching, paper, and trading commodities, while exiting from pipelines, tankers, fiberglass, and feedlots. Koch is a classic model of Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction.”
* Excerpts from his book "The Science of Success" - link

Highlights

* Charles Koch confessed that being private is one of the secrets to his company’s success. “Most publicly traded companies focus on short-term quarterly earnings reports and, therefore, have a hard time maximizing long-term value. If we had been a public company, I would have been fired long ago!”
* Koch started out as an oil & gas firm, but has since expanded into chemicals, plastics, fertilizers, ranching, paper, and trading commodities, while exiting from pipelines, tankers, fiberglass, and feedlots. Koch is a classic model of Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction.”

==KEEPING THE COMPANY PRIVATE==
==CREATIVE DESTRUCTION==

Michael Bloomberg

2010-08-28T06:12:00.000-07:00

1. Bloomberg attended Johns Hopkins University, where he joined Phi Kappa Psi, and graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in electrical engineering. Later he received his MBA degree from Harvard Business School. On May 16, 2009, he received a honorary doctorate of humane letters from Fordham University and in 2007 he received an honorary doctorate of public service from Tufts University.
2. Bloomberg became a general partner at Salomon Brothers, where he headed equity trading and, later, systems development. In 1981, he was fired from Salomon Brothers and was given a $10-million severance package. Using this money, Bloomberg went on to set up a company named Innovative Market Systems. In 1982, Merrill Lynch became the new company's first customer, installing 22 of the company's Market Master terminals and investing $30 million in the company. The company was renamed Bloomberg L.P. in 1986. By 1987, it had installed 5,000 terminals.
3. "We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn't think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we're already on prototype version No. 5. By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version No. 10. It gets back to planning versus acting. We act from day one; others plan how to plan - for months."

Highlights

* In 1981, he was fired from Salomon Brothers and was given a $10-million severance package. Using this money, Bloomberg went on to set up a company named Innovative Market Systems.
* "We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn't think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we're already on prototype version No. 5. By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version No. 10. It gets back to planning versus acting. We act from day one; others plan how to plan - for months."

==GOT FIRED, AND GOT FIRED UP==
==TAKING A PRODUCT EARLY TO THE MARKET INSTEAD OF GETTING INTO ANALYSIS PARALYSIS==

Lee Shau Kee

2010-08-28T04:37:00.000-07:00

* Lee's wealth rebounded, thanks in part to doubling share price of Henderson Land Development, the property firm he founded and still heads. Active investor in China, has stakes in such outperfomers as PetroChina, China Shenhua Energy and China Life. Chairman of Hong Kong & China Gas, which distributes gas in more than 90 cities. Also chairman of Miramar Hotel and Investment, and a director of Hong Kong Ferry and Bank of East Asia
* Born in Guangdong, Dr Lee Shau Kee settled in Hong Kong in his early years and has since been actively engaged in property development and other commercial businesses for over 40 years.

Sam Walton - Success Strategies and Secrets of Success

2010-08-22T02:30:00.000-07:00

1. Walton's life was not easy, though, and his academics were met with equal challenges at home. Growing up during the Great Depression meant that his family was always looking for ways to save money and Walton's parents required him to tend to matters at home as much as those at school. Part of his daily routine involved milking cows and delivering milk, along with newspapers, to people in the neighborhood.
2. With his degree, Sam Walton joined the management team of JCPenny in Des Moines, Iowa, only three days after graduation - this might have helped in his later career, perhaps?
3. 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.
4. He continued to open new stores and offered the managers to become involved in the business from an investment perspective
5. Walton remained dedicated to keeping Wal-Mart involved in local activities by allowing charities to hold bake sales on his property as well as providing scholarships to high school graduates from local schools.
6. He appears to have been a very enterprising guy, right from his school and college days
7. Walton made sure the shelves were consistently stocked with a wide range of goods at low prices. His store also stayed open later than most other stores, especially during the Christmas season. He also pioneered the practice of discount merchandising by buying wholesale goods from the lowest priced supplier. This allowed him to pass on savings to his customers, which drove up his sales volume. Higher volumes allowed him to negotiate even lower purchase prices with the wholesaler on subsequent purchases.
8. Walton offered managers the opportunity to become limited partners if they would invest in the store they oversaw and then invest a maximum of $1,000 in new outlets as they opened. This motivated the managers to always try to maximize profits and improve their managerial skills.
9. Share your profits with all your associates - “Treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations. Remain a corporation and retain control if you like, but behave as a servant leader in a partnership. Encourage your associates to hold a stake in the company. Offer discounted stock, and grant them stock for their retirement. It’s the single best thing we ever did.”
10. Motivate your partners - “Money and ownership alone are not enough. Constantly, day by day, think of new and more interesting ways to motivate and challenge your partners. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous payoffs. If things get stale, cross-pollinate; have managers switch jobs with one another to stay challenged. Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be. Don’t become too predictable.”
11. Exceed your customers’ expectations - “If you do, they will come back over and over. Give them what they want - and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don’t make excuses - apologies. Stand behind everything you do. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign, ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed‘. They are still up there, and they have made all the difference.”
12. Appreciate everything your associates do for the business - “A paycheck and a stock option will buy one kind of loyalty. But all of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it often, and especially when we have done something we are really proud of. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They are absolutely free - and worth a fortune.”
13. Control your expenses better than your competition - “This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. For 25 years running - long before Wal-Mart was known as the nation’s largest retailer - we ranked number one in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales."
14. Swim upstream - “Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything else was: a town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.”

Sources
http://www.woopidoo.com/biography/sam-walton/

Highlights

* With his degree, Sam Walton joined the management team of JCPenny in Des Moines, Iowa, only three days after graduation - this might have helped in his later career, perhaps?
* He continued to open new stores and offered the managers to become involved in the business from an investment perspective
* Walton made sure the shelves were consistently stocked with a wide range of goods at low prices.
* His store also stayed open later than most other stores, especially during the Christmas season. He also pioneered the practice of discount merchandising by buying wholesale goods from the lowest priced supplier.
* Walton offered managers the opportunity to become limited partners if they would invest in the store they oversaw and then invest a maximum of $1,000 in new outlets as they opened. This motivated the managers to always try to maximize profits and improve their managerial skills.
* Swim upstream - “Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything else was: a town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.”

==JOINING THE RIGHT COMPANY EARLY IN CAREER==
==OFFERING COLLEAGUES TO BECOME MORE INVOLVED IN THE COMPANY FROM A FINANCIAL AND OWNERSHIP PERSPECTIVE==
==MAKING SURE CUSTOMERS ARE EXTREMELY SATISFIED WITH WHAT YOU OFFER==
==DOING IMPORTANT THINGS THAT COMPETITORS DO NOT DO OUT OF HABIT OR CUSTOM==
==CONTRARIAN THINKING==

Ingvar Kamprad - Success Secrets and Strategies

2010-08-19T23:57:00.000-07:00

Kamprad began to develop a business as a young boy, selling matches to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that he could buy matches in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm, sell them individually at a low price, and still make a good profit. From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds, and later ballpoint pens and pencils. When Kamprad was 17, his father gave him a cash reward for succeeding in his studies. He used this money to establish what has grown into IKEA.

Trading appears to have fascinated him right from his childhood!

* At an early age, he learned that he could buy matches in bulk from Stockholm and sell them at a fair price, but a good profit. He reinvested his profits and expanded to fish, seeds, Christmas tree decorations, and pens and pencils
* He continued to expand his business to a variety of goods, including wallets, watches, jewelery and stockings. When he outgrew his ability to call on his customers individually, he converted to a sort of makeshift mail order operation, hiring the local milk van to make his deliveries.
* In 1947, Kamprad introduced furniture into the IKEA product line. The use of local manufacturers allowed him to keep his costs down. The furniture was a hit, and in 1951, Kamprad decided to discontinue all other product lines and focus on furniture. In 1953, the first IKEA showroom opened. It came about because of competitive pressures. IKEA was in a price war with its main competitor. The showroom allowed people to see it, touch it, feel it, and be sure of the quality before buying.
* In 1950, Ingvar Kamprad developed the concept of foldable furniture, the secret to IKEA's success. The Swedish businessman patiently built his empire of inexpensive contemporary furniture that now extends to the far corners of the world.
* Was foldable furniture Ingvar's real breakthrough idea?
* Best Advice For Entrepreneurs: “Time is your most important resource. You can do so much in ten minutes. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. Ten minutes are not just one-sixth of your hourly pay. Ten minutes are a piece of yourself. Divide your life into ten-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.”
* The inspiration for IKEA’s design philosophy came when taking the legs off of a chair to fit it into a car. IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad was so irritated by the experience that he developed the concept of flat pack design. The novel packing method had a twofold appeal: it allowed easier shopping for urban Europeans who depended on public transportation, and it also lowered the company’s shipping costs dramatically.
* The IKEA Catalogue Is Bigger Than the Bible - The IKEA catalogue was and is the company’s greatest weapon in its arsenal. A 300-page missionary text, it goes out to over 180 million people in 27 different languages. Each year, there are more copies of the IKEA catalogue printed than the Bible. A bit of a cult following has also developed around the catalogues, with earnest readers on the lookout for hidden messages in the pictures, such as running references to Mickey Mouse and weird, obscure books on the bookshelves.

Highlights

* In 1950, Ingvar Kamprad developed the concept of foldable furniture, the secret to IKEA's success. The Swedish businessman patiently built his empire of inexpensive contemporary furniture that now extends to the far corners of the world.
* Best Advice For Entrepreneurs: “Time is your most important resource. You can do so much in ten minutes. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. Ten minutes are not just one-sixth of your hourly pay. Ten minutes are a piece of yourself. Divide your life into ten-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.”
* The inspiration for IKEA’s design philosophy came when taking the legs off of a chair to fit it into a car. IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad was so irritated by the experience that he developed the concept of flat pack design.

==USEFUL PRODUCT INNOVATION==
==SPLIT YOUR LIFE INTO TEN MINUTE PACKETS==
==SEEKING OPPORTUNITIES FROM EVERYDAY PROBLEMS, ESPECIALLY PROBLEMS IN USING A/THE PRODUCT==

Karl Albrecht - Small Grocery Store to Mega Discount Chain

2010-08-19T22:41:00.000-07:00

Germany's richest man - he seems to have really been a case of self-made. He and his brother took over their mom's small corner grocery shop in a city in Germany and built it into one of the largest discount chains in the world - Aldi.

Lesson? Not sure, since little is known about how they did it. Naturally, it helped that their mom ran a small grocery shop, but there are tens of thousands of moms and pops running grocery shops - their kids continue to remain small grocery shop owners as well!

Late Blooming Billionaires

2010-08-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

A nice article @ Yahoo on billionaires who started late - on David Duffield (PeopleSoft), John Sperling (adult education in the US), Dietrich Mateschitz (Red Bull energy drink)...http://in.news.yahoo.com/240/20100816/1301/twl-7832129.html

Amancio Ortega Gaona - Facts, Bio, Info

2010-07-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

* Ortega keeps a very low profile and there are practically no photographs of him (except from one photo published at the Inditex website). He refuses to wear a tie, and likes to dress in blue jeans and T-shirts. He is said to take a very active part in the production and design process in the company.
* When he made a public appearance in 2000 - as part of the warm-up prior to floating his company on the stock market in 2001 - it made headlines in the Spanish financial press. However, he has never given an interview, and his secrecy has led to the publication of books such as Amancio Ortega: DE CERO A ZARA (From Zero to Zara)
* With then-wife Rosalia Mera, also now a billionaire, started making dressing gowns and lingerie in their living room.
* At the age of 13, Ortega began working for a shirtmaker as a delivery boy in La Coruna, Galicia, the center of the Iberian textile industry. He worked for a variety of stores and tailors and studied how products and costs changed as they traveled from the manufacturer to the consumer. As a result, he became focused on the importance of getting products directly to the consumer without a middle man.
* Zara is renowned for the speed with which it is able to respond to changing fashions - normally, a matter of a few weeks - and it does this by keeping the manufacture of its clothes at home, rather than outsourcing to sweatshops in low-cost countries.
* although he avoids the financial intricacies of the publicly traded company, he still enjoys designing and working with the details of fashion.

Highlights

* At the age of 13, Ortega began working for a shirtmaker as a delivery boy in La Coruna, Galicia, the center of the Iberian textile industry. He worked for a variety of stores and tailors and studied how products and costs changed as they traveled from the manufacturer to the consumer. As a result, he became focused on the importance of getting products directly to the consumer without a middle man.
* Zara is renowned for the speed with which it is able to respond to changing fashions - normally, a matter of a few weeks - and it does this by keeping the manufacture of its clothes at home, rather than outsourcing to sweatshops in low-cost countries.
* Although he avoids the financial intricacies of the publicly traded company, he still enjoys designing and working with the details of fashion.

==OBSERVING OPPORTUNITIES ALONG THE BUSINESS VALUE CHAIN OR IN A SPECIFIC PROCESS IN THE VALUE CHAIN==
==RESPONDING QUICKLY TO MARKET NEEDS==
==ENJOY WORKING WITH THE CORE PRODUCT AND INNOVATING IT==

Eike Batista - Facts and info

2010-07-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

* Eike Fuhrken Batista (Governador Valadares, November 3, 1957) is a Brazilian entrepreneur. He has founded companies in different business sectors, mainly in mining. He is the son of Eliezer Batista da Silva, a longtime head of mining company Vale.
* In 1980, he moved back to Brazil to begin a gold and trading company in the Amazon. Shortly after he joined Canadian mining firm TVX Gold, making and then losing a fortune, before finally selling his stake in the company for $1 billion in 2000. Afterward he reinvested in several businesses, including mining. A large portion of his wealth was made from OGX, an oil and gas exploration company founded in 2007
* Batista, one of seven children of a high-level government official, got into gold at an early age and eventually controlled mines from Chile to Russia.
* "Initially, I started a trading company to buy the gold and sell it. After a year and a half, there I was at 23 with $6 million in my hand. And margins were going down because competition started to come in. I said, "I have to reinvent myself. Why not buy one of these rich pick-and-shovel mines and mechanize it?" By 1983, I had Brazil's first alluvial mechanized gold mine running in the Amazon jungle."
* "But you know, over time you learn that knowledge is important. So I hired a team of executives from [the Brazilian state oil company] Petrobras who had great knowledge. Finding oil is a multidisciplinary science. You need a lot of people—statisticians, engineers, and geologists, of course. And what I have learned in the past 30 years is that I read people better than I read books."
* A comment on the article about Eike - "'As someone who comes from Indonesia,a land abundant with everything imaginable, from oil to uranium,yes,i agree with the fact that Mr. Batista did have good connections to begin with. But in my country there are also many who have "Papi" connections,yet they are not as successful nor insightful.First of all,the business savvy move of quitting school to take a chance on the brazilian jungles is worth noting in itself.If we look further back, the fact that Mr. Batista was raised in Germany and not in the lavish comforts of Brazil where all "Papi" connections could afford,builds character.What other son of a minister would sell insurance door to door, then dropped out of school to go into the depths of the brazilian jungle and took such a risk that paid off. I''ve seen many in my country with the same,if not better background as Mr. Batista yet don''t come anywhere near his success.So yes, well connection does count,but it is not a guarantee.There is no substitute for plain hard work,and good luck. A trait that i see evident in Mr. Batista.Last note, in any Business World, having good connections is not an upperhand,it''s a must!' "

Highlights

* "But you know, over time you learn that knowledge is important. So I hired a team of executives from Petrobras who had great knowledge. Finding oil is a multidisciplinary science. You need a lot of people—statisticians, engineers, and geologists, of course. And what I have learned in the past 30 years is that I read people better than I read books."
* He is the son of Eliezer Batista da Silva, a longtime head of mining company Vale.

==HAVING PEOPLE WITH COMPLEMENTARY KNOWLEDGE IS IMPORTANT IF YOU WISH TO BUILD SOMETHING THAT IS COMPLEX AND INTEGRATED==
==BEING THE SON OF AN INFLUENTIAL PERSON IN A RELATED INDUSTRY==

Warren Buffett - Facts, Highlights, Success Secrets?

2010-07-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

1. Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the second of three children and only son of Leila (née Stahl) and businessman/politician Howard Buffett.[13] Buffett began his education at Rose Hill Elementary School in Omaha. In 1942, his father was elected to the first of four terms in the United States Congress
2. Even as a child, Buffett displayed an interest in making and saving money. He went door to door selling chewing gum, Coca-Cola, or weekly magazines. For a while, he worked in his grandfather's grocery store. While still in high school, he carried out several successful money-making ideas: delivering newspapers, selling golfballs and stamps, and detailing cars, among them. Filing his first income tax return in 1944, Buffett took a $35 deduction for the use of his bicycle and watch on his paper route.
3. In 1945, in his sophomore year of high school, Buffett and a friend spent $25 to purchase a used pinball machine, which they placed in the local barber shop. Within months, they owned several machines in different barber shops.
4. Buffett's interest in the stock market and investing also dated to his childhood, to the days he spent in the customers' lounge of a regional stock brokerage near the office of his father's own brokerage company.
5. On a trip to New York City at the age of ten, he made a point to visit the New York Stock Exchange. And about this same time he purchased shares of Cities Service for himself and his sister. While in high school he invested in a business owned by his father and bought a farm worked by a tenant farmer. By the time he finished college, Buffett had accumulated more than $90,000 in savings measured in 2009 dollars

Carlos Slim Helu - Facts, Data, Quotes and More

2010-07-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

* His parents founded the first magazine for the Lebanese community in Mexico
* According to The Wall Street Journal, Slim credits part of his ability to discover investment opportunities early to the writings of his friend, futurist author Alvin Toffler.
* Slim gained notoriety when he led a group of investors that included France Télécom and Southwestern Bell Corporation in buying Telmex and Telnor from the Mexican government in 1990 in a public tender during the presidency of Carlos Salinas. Slim was able to raise money for a telecommunications company by purchasing standby letters of credit which enabled him to obtain guaranteed loans which provided the capital. Today, 90 percent of the telephone lines in Mexico are operated by Telmex.
* " His portfolio is set up so he can shift to a sector that's performing well cyclically ... It's all part of diversification." - SOURCE: Financial Post
* "As long as you have bigger production in your mines, your profitability margins are bigger"
* Mexico's Carlos Slim makes his billions the old-fashioned way: monopolies
* The portly Mr. Slim is a study in contradiction. He says he likes competition in business, but blocks it at every turn. He loves talking about technology, but doesn't use a computer and prefers pen and paper. He hosts everyone from Bill Clinton to author Gabriel García Márquez at his Mexico City mansion, but is provincial in many ways, doesn't travel widely, and proudly says he owns no homes outside of Mexico. In a country of soccer fans, he likes baseball. He roots for the sport's richest team, the New York Yankees.
* Mr. Slim's strategy has been consistent over his long career: Buy companies on the cheap, whip them into shape, and ruthlessly drive competitors out of business. After Mr. Slim got control of Telmex in 1990, he quickly cornered the market for copper cables used by Telmex for telephone wires. He bought one of the two main suppliers and made sure Telmex didn't buy any cable from the other big supplier, eventually prompting the owners to sell the company to him.
* The fifth of six children, Mr. Slim was born wealthy. His father, Julian Slim, made his fortune on a general store in downtown Mexico City called "The Orient Star." His father died when Mr. Slim was only 13.
* Early on, Mr. Slim showed an aptitude for numbers that would help his career. He taught algebra at Mexico's largest public university while finishing his thesis, titled "Applications of Linear Theory in Civil Engineering."
* After college, Mr. Slim and some friends became stockbrokers in the country's fledgling market. Trading by day and playing dominoes by night, the clique became known as "Los Casabolseros," or "The Stock Market Boys."
* A good time to buy came in 1982, a year that would shape Mr. Slim's destiny. That year, the collapsing price of oil threw Mexico into a tailspin. When departing president José López Portillo nationalized Mexico's banks, the traditional business elite feared the country was becoming socialist, and ran for the exits. Companies were selling for as little as 5% of their book value. Mr. Slim picked up dozens of leading firms for bargain-basement prices, a move that paid off when the economy recovered in the following years. He bought Mexico's largest insurer, Seguros de México, for $44 million. Today, the company is worth at least $2.5 billion. "Countries don't go broke," an unflappable Mr. Slim told friends at the time
* Despite his abilities, many here believe his biggest break was the rise to power in 1988 of Carlos Salinas, a Harvard-educated technocrat bent on modernizing the country. The two men had struck up a friendship in the mid-1980s, and Mr. Salinas spoke of Mr. Slim as the country's brightest young businessman.
* In 2004, Spain's Telefónica SA began selling handsets at a loss here to build market share. But it soon realized that tens of thousands of phones were purchased but never used. According to a case currently at Mexico's antitrust agency, Telefónica says that Telcel (Slim's co) distributors bought the phones to keep them off the market, in some cases swapping the phone's existing chip with their own and reselling the handset.
* The Telmex chief also had friends in high places. Vicente Fox, Mexico's first opposition president when he won in 2000, tapped a former Telmex employee, Pedro Cerisola, to be his minister of communications and transport. During his tenure, Mr. Cerisola rarely moved against Telmex, say executives from rival telephone companies.

Highlights

* His parents founded the first magazine for the Lebanese community in Mexico
* Slim credits part of his ability to discover investment opportunities early to the writings of his friend, futurist author Alvin Toffler.
* Slim gained notoriety when he led a group of investors that included France Télécom and Southwestern Bell Corporation in buying Telmex and Telnor from the Mexican government in 1990 in a public tender during the presidency of Carlos Salinas. Slim was able to raise money for a telecommunications company by purchasing standby letters of credit which enabled him to obtain guaranteed loans which provided the capital.
* Mr. Slim's strategy has been consistent over his long career: Buy companies on the cheap, whip them into shape, and ruthlessly drive competitors out of business.
* Despite his abilities, many here believe his biggest break was the rise to power in 1988 of Carlos Salinas, a Harvard-educated technocrat bent on modernizing the country. The two men had struck up a friendship in the mid-1980s, and Mr. Salinas spoke of Mr. Slim as the country's brightest young businessman.
* A good time to buy came in 1982, a year that would shape Mr. Slim's destiny. That year, the collapsing price of oil threw Mexico into a tailspin. When departing president José López Portillo nationalized Mexico's banks, the traditional business elite feared the country was becoming socialist, and ran for the exits. Companies were selling for as little as 5% of their book value. Mr. Slim picked up dozens of leading firms for bargain-basement prices, a move that paid off when the economy recovered in the following years.
* After college, Mr. Slim and some friends became stockbrokers in the country's fledgling market. Trading by day and playing dominoes by night, the clique became known as "Los Casabolseros," or "The Stock Market Boys."

==BEING THE FIRST TO LAUNCH A PRODUCT EVEN IF FOR A NICHE MARKET SEGMENT==
==DISCOVERING INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES EARLY==
==BUYING THINGS ON THE CHEAP, WHIPPING THEM INTO SHAPE AND RUTHLESSLY DRIVE COMPETITORS OUT OF BUSINESS==
==BECOMING FRIEND WITH TOP POLITICAL LEADERSHIP==
==BUYING THINGS WHEN EVERYONE IS SELLING IN A DISTRESS MARKET==
==BEING ONE OF THE FIRST TO START WORKING IN A NEW MARKET==