Entrepreneurship TiasNimbas Business School Int. MSc. in Business Administration Module Entrepreneurship Joris van Kreij 200952109 Individual assignment 6 June 2011 Prof. Shahid Rasul 2420 words Table of Contents 1 Gardiner Greene Hubbard 3 1.1 Background 3 1.2 Journey 3 1.3 Grabbing the opportunity 4 1.4 Factors for success 5 1.5 Legacy 6 2 Own Entrepreneurial Capabilities 7 2.1 General Enterprise Test 7 2.2 Applegate Entrepreneurial Mindset 8 2.3 Other tests and personal feedback 8 2.4 Analysis 9 3 Conclusion 10 Appendixes 11 References 13 Entrepreneurship 2 1 Gardiner Greene Hub bard Gardiner Greene Hubbard (August 25, 1822 – December 11, 1897) was a lawyer , financier, and philanthropist from the United States. Among other remarkable feats he was founder of the Bell Telephone Company and the first president of the National Geographic Society . This report will mainly focus on Hubbard’s contribution to the telephone services in t he United States. 1.1 Background Gardiner Greene Hubbard was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1822. His father Samuel Hubbard was a Massachusetts Supreme Court justice. Hubbard was also a grandson of Boston merchant Gardiner Greene. He was further a descendant of Lion Gardiner, an early English settler and soldier in the New World who founded the first English settlement in what later became the State of New York. Hubbard attended the Phillips Academy in Andover, graduated from Dartmou th in 1841 and studied law at Harvard. 1.2 Journey Gardiner Greene Hubbard has been active in many different fields. The main events of his life have been listed below. • After his study Hubbard joined a Boston law firm where his practice included some patent work. He relocated to Washington, D.C. in 1873 . Gardiner Hubbard helped establish a city water works in Cambridge, was a founder of the Cambridge Gas Co. helped Gordon McKay secure patent covera ge for his shoemaking machinery, and organized a Cambridge to Boston trolley system. • Hubbard married and had three daughters. One of his daughters, Mabel Gardiner Hubbard became deaf at the age of five from scarlet fever. She later became a student of Alexander Graham Bell, who taught de af children, and they eventually married in 1877. • Hubbard p layed a significant role in the founding of Clar ke School for the Deaf, the first oral school for the deaf in the United States, located in Northampton, Massachusetts. He was President of this scho ol for ten years. Hubbard was further a trustee of the Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes. Entrepreneurship 3 • Hubbard argued for the nationalization of the telegraph system (then a monopoly of the Western Union Company) under the U.S. Postal Service. During the late 1860s, Gardiner Hubbard had lobbied Congress to pass the U.S. Postal Telegraph Bill that was known as the Hubbard Bill. The bill would have chartered the U.S. Postal Telegraph Company that would be connected to the U.S. Post Office. The Hubbard Bill did not pass. • To benefit from the Hubbard Bill, Hubbard needed patents which dominated essential aspects of telegraph technology such as sending multiple messages simultaneously on a single telegraph wire. This was called the ‘harmonic telegraph’ or ‘acoustic telegraphy ’. To acquire such patents, Hubbard and his partner Thomas Sanders (whose son was also deaf) financed Alexander Graham Bell's experiments and the development of an acoustic, which unexpectedly led to his invention of the telephone. • Hubbard organized the Bell Telephone Company on July 9, 1877, with himself as president, Thomas Sanders as Treasurer and Alexander Graham Bell as chief electrician. This company subsequently evolved in to the National Bell Telephone Company and then the American Bell Telephone Company, merging with smaller telephone companies during its growth. The American Bell Telephone Company would, at the very end of 1899, evolve into AT&T and had become the largest corporation in America. • In 1876 Hubbard was appointed by President Grant to determine the proper rates for Railway Mail. • Hubbard became a principal investor in the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company. • In 1888 Hubbard founded the National Geographic Society and was first president for many years. 1.3 Grabbing the opportunities With his background in law, Gardiner Green Hubbard helped business start-ups in the early part of his life. This gave him a lot of experience and insight in the challenges that starting companies face. The unfortunate fate of his daughter caused extensive involvement of Hubbard in deaf education. This led to the founding of the first oral school for the deaf in the United States. Hubbard had a suspicion of large-scale organisations, especially those controlled by New York financiers. According to Hubbard, Western Union, led by William Orton, was not serving the public interest: the company was pursuing only a business market, it was not using the most up-to-date technology and it was not reducing its prices. For Hubbard, the solution lay in rethinking the market for the telegraph. To be able to exploit social and governmental messaging Hubbard proposed to locate telegraph offices not just in railway stations (Western Union’s common practice) but in post offices which were much more convenient to the average citizen. Hubbard was convinced that there was an enormous potential market for social and governmental messages and that this demand could be used to lower prices and expand telegraph service to every town and village in America. This would better serve the needs of the American public and advance democracy. To create this alternative telegraph system, Hubbard sought government support. This he had Entrepreneurship 4 done before for other causes as well (i.e. he convinced the Massachusetts legislature to support a school for the deaf). Although the earlier mentioned ‘Hubbard Bill’ did not pass, Hubbard found a new way to challenge Western Union in the creative ideas of Alexander Graham Bell. Bell was a young Scotsman who had immigrated with his parents to North America to help promote his father’s system of visible speech. In his search to find the best possible teaching techniques for his daughter and other deaf children, Hubbard invited Bell in 1872 to Massachusetts to teach visible speech. Bell did not wish to devote his life to advancing his father’s system and therefore turned into invention. This led him to develop his own multiple message telegraph. Drawing on the extensive knowledge of acoustics he had acquired in teaching visible speech, Bell investigated a harmonic telegraph. In 1874, after he had begun courting Hubbard’s daughter Mabel, Bell told Hubbard of his telegraph experiments. Hubbard took an immediate interest in Bell’s efforts and encouraged him to perfect his harmonic scheme as quickly as possible. Hubbard knew that he could use the invention of a better multiple telegraph which could change the telegraph industry. In February 1876, Bell filed a patent for his harmonic telegraph scheme which included claims for a speaking telegraph. Six weeks later, Bell succeeded in transmitting the voice and thus inventing the telephone. Hubbard saw the big opportunities that this invention brought along. He believed that it would be used for domestic and social purposes. The Bell Telephony Company, founded by Hubbard in July 1877 held the Bell patents and issued licenses to individuals who wanted to set up local telephone exchanges. Eventually the company installed 56.000 telephones in 55 cities. Mergers with smaller companies followed and the company would evolve into AT&T at the end of 1899 to become the largest corporation in America. 1.4 Factors for success There are several causes from which Hubbard’s success originated. These are the most important factors. Chance It is difficult to call it luck that Hubbard’s daughter became deaf; however it is the indirect cause that Alexander Graham Bell became his son-in-law. The cooperation with Bell has been the core of Hubbard’s success in reforming the communication industry in the United States. Vision Hubbard saw the opportunities of the telephone and knew how to commercialise it. Not afraid to ‘break the rules’ It is surprising that Hubbard asked the Congress to provide the capital for a private corporation which would build the new network and in turn enter into a contract with the Post Office. Somehow he was perfectly comfortable combining a crusade for the public good with pursuing private gain. Entrepreneurship 5 Persistence Hubbard showed perseverance throughout his life. For example: despite the fact that the Hubbard Bill did not pass, Hubbard continued his battle against the monopoly position of Western Union. Social network Hubbard’s contacts within governmental bodies enabled him to get (financial) support for his projects. Fighting for the public interest Many of Hubbard’s activities were for the public good instead of his own interest. This helped him to receive assistance in achieving his objectives. When he became president of the National Geographic Society Hubbard stated: “By my election you notify the public that the membership of our Society will not be confined to professional geographers, but will include that large number who, like myself, desire to promote special researches by others, and to diffuse the knowledge so gained, among men, so that we may all know more of the world upon we live.” 1.5 Legacy Gardiner Hubbard’s life is detailed in the book ‘One Thousand Years of Hubbard History’, by Edward Warren Day. His legacy includes Gardiners Island which remains in the family and is the largest privately owned island in the United States. Further, in 1890, Mount Hubbard on the Alaska-Yukon border was named after him by an expedition co-sponsored by the National Geographic Society while he was president.