In the series, The Men Who Built America, it has an episode called The New Machine. This episode is about a young entrepreneur named, Henry Ford, who created the first affordable and reliable motor car. But in order for his idea to even be released and verified for sales and production, he has to get his idea to be approved by the association of licensed automobile manufacturers, which was first rejected. This made Henry decide to make a name for himself instead. After beating the world fastest motor vehicle driver, is what made him very famous. This brought in tons of investors and lots of money for Henry to start his company. After starting to develop his cars, he gets sued by the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers but ends up winning in favor of Henry Ford. Why this is entrepreneurial is because in the era Henry Ford was in, motorized vehicles were seen to be a luxury item that was fairly expensive. But Henrys idea was to make durable and cheap vehicles become an everyday thing that consumers that were considered, “ordinary” can enjoy other than just wealthy people. This is also entrepreneurial because he makes building the cars more efficient and increased production by making his employees build the cars on an assembly line instead of making them all at one at time. One reason why this episode is interesting to me is that Henry Ford did not care for the big monopoly that rejected his idea and tried suing him after becoming famous. This shows the great deal of courage it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. It shows that in almost any angle of business, there is always a bigger corporation that tries to block you from becoming competition. This aspect of entrepreneurship affects society by giving the normal people the ability to afford a motorized car that was a twelfth of the price of other vehicles. This aspect of entrepreneurship also affected society by opening up many opportunities for other entrepreneurs to come in innovate the rest of the world as we see it, as a result from the demand for Fords skyrocketing. This is including the market for oil, roads and highways, strip malls and food restaurants to be plopped up in the future all because this entrepreneurial idea changed how we see the world. Society back in this day of age with Henry Ford supported this aspect of entrepreneurship not only because it gave jobs of double, almost triple the salary of other employers. They supported this type of entrepreneurship because it was the one of the first times an entrepreneur has thought about a middleclass target audience. Since society saw a chance to receive an affordable, reliable car, the demand for these cars went through the roof bringing in more investors. That brings in even more customers which turns into even more of a revenue and innovation for Ford. The interaction between this aspect of entrepreneurship and society is that during this time many individuals that owned a motorized vehicle before the production of Ford was extremely wealthy. Therefore, making the middle and lower class citizens of society left with no choice but having to take trains or even walk. The development of the Ford car made it to where the lower and middle class of society is able to also live the same life as others. Henry Ford is a man that single handedly started the chain of innovations that are believed to be brought up in the world, and that is something that has changed the world forever.
