Confessions of the Entrepreneur: Creating a World-Class Company

Bob Thomas is an entrepreneur who created two world-class high-tech companies, one a division of Emerson — a Fortune 500 company — and the other a division of ABB — a giant Swiss conglomerate.  Both were built from scratch without investing, borrowing, selling stock, or taking venture capital. Thomas shares his entrepreneurial secrets and teaches what it takes to make a lasting mark in business and to become globally competitive. At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge and global competitiveness, Thomas stands as a genuine hero of free-market capitalism — an example of entrepreneurial inventiveness and applied innovation.  Thomas knows the best way to create value is to connect creativity with technology, combined with world-class salesmanship.  Bob's book is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values. Thomas points out that the CEOs of large American corporations today are not entrepreneurs, but rather are bureaucratically trained managers from the Wharton, Harvard, and Stanford type schools of business. The founding entrepreneurs, like Thomas himself, have long ago moved on, leaving behind the day-to-day business of finance, mergers, acquisitions, and big company politics in the hands of bureaucratic caretakers. Surprisingly, Thomas argues that both founding entrepreneurs and successor bureaucratic managers play an equally essential roll in a thriving free-market capitalistic society. Although Bob's writing is humorous, it is not without controversy; nor is he likely to qualify for an award in political correctness. Thomas speaks his mind, letting the chips fall where they may. Listed among his do’s and don'ts, for example, is his advice to, "never hire a woman under 45 years of age."