In the documentary, How Henry Ford Invented the Model T | The Men Who Built America, there are many aspects of entrepreneurship, from government intervention through regulations and pattens, to arguably the biggest innovation to hit the world, the assembly line. Henery ford innovated the production in a massive way when he created the production line. Giving a little back story, Henery ford was trying to start his business during a time where a very small group of people held the wealth and power within America. This included the car industry; one man controlled a patten believed to give him sole rights to the object the car. This proposed great challenges to Mr. Ford since he was not abiding by this patten and giving royalties on every car sold. They were taken to court where they ruled that the patten did not apply to the object of the car, thus allowing Mr. Ford to be able to continue his innovations. Mr. Fords Greatest innovation making the production line more efficient. How he did this was by moving a different object.
In previous production lines, the process was a little more choppy. The workers would have their part of the assembly line and move to each product when it was their turn to further the process. Depending on the size of the product, this could take each person a long time. While this may have been more efficient in some ways than the previous form of production, there was still room for improvement. Since Mr. Ford’s product was quite large, being a car, he had to think about how he could streamline the process. His innovation was having the product move from station to station rather than the employee. This made it so the car would be put together piece by piece and the workers' time would be utilized as efficiently as possible. So much so that still today there has been very little improvement to the assembly line, over 100 years later.
This aspect of entrepreneurship affects society in a major way. Since Mr. Ford was able to increase the production rate of his cars, he was able to keep the cost very low. This made it so his product, something previously only for the elites, was now cheap enough to be available to the majority of the population. It also changed the way we would produce goods for decades to come. Society unknowingly supports this by purchasing Mr. Ford’s products. How they affect this aspect of entrepreneurship is through their support of cheaper but good quality goods, such as the model T. The interaction between this aspect of entrepreneurship and society is normally unnoticed. This is due to the innovation in dealing with things that go on in the background, such as the product moving instead of the employees. However, there are examples that society does notice such as the camera quality improving on their phone, or the change from normal batteries to rechargeable batteries. So, the interaction depends on the innovation. As said before, Mr. Ford's innovation has to do with an aspect of production not seen by the public so they unknowingly support it.
