RICHARD BRANSON
1950–
Founder of the Virgin Group of
businesses, Richard Branson was
born in 1950 in Surrey, UK. In 1969
he started a mail-order record
company called Virgin, which then
expanded into retail stores. In 1972
he built a recording studio, and
began his own record label. The
Virgin brand expanded into diverse
areas, and the Virgin Group today
consists of more than 200 companies
in more than 30 countries,
including Virgin Atlantic airlines,
Virgin Radio, and Virgin Galactic.
See also: Beating the odds at
start-up 20–21 ■ Creating a brand
260–65 ■ Generating buzz 276–78
SUBIR CHOWDHURY
1967–
An expert on quality management,
Subir Chowdhury was born in
Chittagong, Bangladesh in 1967.
He earned a degree in aeronautical
engineering at the Indian Institute
of Technology, Kharagpur, before
business administration at Harvard
Business School, Christensen has
published widely; his first book,
The Innovator’s Dilemma, is an
international best seller.
See also: Changing the game
92–99 ■ Crisis management 188–89
■ Avoiding complacency 194–201ROBERTO CIVITA
1936–2013Brazilian media baron Roberto
Civita was born in Milan, Italy, in- His family moved to the US
shortly after his birth, then to Brazil
around 10 years later, where his
father founded the Abril publishing
company. Civita studied for several
degrees at various US universities,
in subjects as diverse as nuclear
and particle physics, journalism,
economics, and sociology. After
stints working at Time and Abril,
in 1968 he started Veja, Brazil’s
best-selling weekly magazine. His
successful media and educational
enterprises led Forbes magazine
to estimate his net worth as
$4.9 billion at his death in 2013.
See also: Rupert Murdoch 337
DIRECTORY
B
usiness is all about succeeding, often against considerable odds,
and to do so its practitioners have drawn on a range of insights
from a number of related disciplines. It requires an understanding
of people, numbers, and systems, so it is perhaps not surprising that a
large proportion of its key thinkers come from the fields of psychology,
mathematics, and engineering. Some of them have proved adept at turning
theory into practice, building large businesses that continue to evolve and
grow over the long term. The main part of this book has examined the
work of some of those key thinkers in detail; here we look at others whose
impact on the business environment is marked, from industrial designers
and theorists to inspirational leaders and management gurus.studying industrial management
at Central Michigan University, MI.
His consulting work within diverse
industries led him to develop the
LEO (Listen, Enrich, Optimize)
solution, popularized in his book,
The Ice Cream Maker. This approach
says that by making “quality” the
responsibility of every employee,
individual quality leads to process
quality and organizational success.
See also: Quality sells 318–23CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN
1952–Clayton Christensen is considered
one of the world’s top management
thinkers. Born in Utah in 1952, he
worked as a missionary for the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints in South Korea from 1971 to- On his return to the US, he
studied economics at Brigham
Young University, Utah, and Oxford
University, UK, before earning an
MBA and doctorate at Harvard
Business School. While working
as a management consultant he
helped found Innosight, a public
policy think tank. Now a professor of
334