Ben Franklin Vs Sam Walton

Giants of Enterprise

What is an innovation? This can be defined as the successful conversion of new concepts and knowledge into new products, services, or processes that deliver new customer value in the marketplace. An innovation adds value, but not all improvements are innovations. Product innovation is a replacement or building on a current offering. They provide new features or other advantages that allow us to operate more efficiently. Process innovation is where the product will have a long life cycle, this is mostly for long term success. Business model innovations are for new products and services along with new manufacturing and delivery processes. This is mostly needed when there is an increased need for agility in business structure, and an increase of speed of change in the market. What is an Entrepreneur? Entrepreneurs are system builders and risk takers that invent brilliant combinations of ideas and inventions.

Sam Walton is an Entrepreneur that had all odds against him when first opening a retail store in 1945. Walton learned all the rules and then broke all the rules. He did not become a billionaire because he was a genius to say the least. The Butler Brothers had a training program for store franchisees and that is where Walton ended up going for 2 weeks before the opening of his store. Learning seemed to be Sam Walton’s passion. He always wanted to make the company better and better. But in a heartbeat due to a renewal clause, he lost the store. Walton ended up blaming everything on himself because that is all he could do. There was no one else to blame, even though he had done everything right in his eyes.

Entrepreneurs believe in honest, intelligent efforts. They do not believe life is unfair. When something goes wrong even though they did everything right they believe it is a temporary misunderstanding that can be corrected. Entrepreneurs learn from their mistakes because usually they