Assignment 2: American Entrepreneur re-write

Brian Bell
INDS 430
January 2009

Dreams: The Secret Ingredient

“Wes Jackson is fond of saying that if your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough” (Chipotle 2007). Wes Jackson, a plant geneticist who founded a nonprofit working to use less harmful chemicals in agriculture, is not my favorite entrepreneur, nor had I even heard of him until I found an empty Chipotle cup in the grass right outside of my apartment. Printed on the side of the cup were the previously stated quote and a short biography of Jackson. And although this man is relatively overlooked, his one quote became the basis in deciding my favorite American entrepreneur: Preston Thomas Tucker.
I am willing to bet that whoever just read that last sentence is thinking to his or herself, “He cheated. All he did was take the other assignment and turned it into two.” But isn’t using one idea or product and expanding and improving upon it the principle of business? Nonetheless, there is a deeper reason that Tucker is now my favorite American entrepreneur.
In researching different entrepreneurs for this assignment, I quickly realized that I could not pick a favorite. I had always admired Ferdinand Porsche due to my obsession for cars and the Porsche Company in general. Unfortunately, halfway through my explorations into his life, I remembered that he was not an American. One of the obvious alternatives would have been Henry Ford, but my prejudices and hatred for the current American auto industry would have completely hindered my ability to write a paper without thinking about dropping the class. The movie “Tucker: The Man and his Dreams” not only appealed to my automotive passion, but it tugged at heartstrings of all viewers by demonstrating pure and true dedication despite the odds and technicalities which plague the entrepreneurs of the 21st century.
From a purely professional standpoint, Tucker was not a successful marketer, learning almost nothing about public demand after his rather unsuccessful armored car. His radical new car design was years ahead of his time, but went nowhere after falling through the first crack of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle (Moore 12). The new product must go through the innovators, early adopters, cross the chasm to the early majority, to late majority, then finally to the laggards. While the chasm between the early adopters and early majority is the most challenging part of marketing a new product, Tucker was unable to even reach that point. The first crack between the innovators and early adopters “occurs when a hot technology product cannot be readily translated into a major new benefit” (Moore 17). While Tucker had a very dedicated group of workers and the support of a few important and wealthy people, the “Big Three” were already producing cars that, as far as the public was concerned, worked just fine. Tucker also did not have a well-established name that early and late adopters look for to mark his company. So why would such an unsuccessful entrepreneur be a favorite on anyone’s list?
Growing up under the guidance of a first-generation immigrant mother, I understood that her dream for me was to study hard, get into a good school, and then get a high-paying and stable career. Interdisciplinary studies in business and film is hardly the ideal for what she had in mind. Not only was it not the ideal, but similar to what people told Tucker, I was also told many times that a future in the entertainment industry is a foolish pursuit and that it will never work, whether it be because I do not know the right people, the industry is too hard to get my foot in the door, or that there are many other people trying to do the same thing. But entrepreneurship is about more than grand success and fortune, although it is a nice plus. Not only did Tucker want to start his own automotive company, he wanted to revolutionize the automotive industry. His plans for disc brakes, fuel injection, torque converters, safety features, and rear-engine placement were scoffed at, ridiculed, and even attacked by the government and large corporations. But just like Wes Jackson said many years later, Tucker’s life work was not to start a company and make a lot of money, after all, he only produced fifty cars and then his company was destroyed. His designs and ideas are still being used in the cars that you and I drive every single day. And whether the final dialogue at the end of the movie was a product of the writers or if it was non-fiction, it represents the backbone and secret ingredient to entrepreneurship: after the court case and fall of his company, it was said that even though people loved his cars, they couldn’t be built. “We made them,” said Tucker, and his partner told him they were only able to produce fifty. Tucker’s sole response? “What’s the difference? Fifty or fifty million, that’s only machinery. It’s the idea that counts, and the dream” (DVD).

Works Cited
Moore, Geoffrey. Crossing the Chasm. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2002.
“Part 5.” People We’re Pleased to Know. Chipotle. 2007.
Tucker: The Man and his Dream. Jeff Bridges. DVD. Paramount Pictures, 2000.