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In the early years, a shareholder asked CEO Herb Kelleher if Southwest couldn’t raise its prices by just a few dollars since its $15 price on the Dallas–San Antonio route was so much lower than Braniff’s $62 fare. Kelleher said no, our real competition is ground transportation, not other airlines.
Joan Magretta • Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy
“General Motors had come to own the manufacturers of 70 percent of everything that went into its automobiles—and had become by far the world’s most integrated large business. It was this prototype keiretsu that gave General Motors the decisive advantage, both in cost and in speed, which made it within a few short years both the world’s largest and
... See morewhen looking into a high-growth firm. I had a manufacturing company that I
Walker Deibel • Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game
The high-water mark for shareholder value thinking was set in 2001, when professors Reinier Kraakman and Henry Hansmann—leading corporate scholars from Harvard and Yale law schools, respectively—published an essay in The Georgetown Law Journal entitled “The End of History for Corporate Law.”
Lynn Stout • The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public
Leon Bean’s response to people who thought he should grow more rapidly in order to make more money: “I’m already eating three meals a day, and couldn’t eat a fourth.”
Jim Collins • Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0
This rags-to-riches tale fails to do justice to McLean’s immense ambition. By 1935, at twenty-two years of age and with just one year of experience as a trucker, McLean owned 2 trucks and 1 tractor trailer, employed nine drivers who owned their own rigs, and had already hauled steel drums from North Carolina to New Jersey and cotton yarn to mills i
... See moreMarc Levinson • The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author
Kelleher did harbor a flaw, however, one that was so obvious no one could appreciate it. He had made Southwest Airlines a one-man show.