In "The Men Who Build America" episode "The New Machine, and aspect of entrepreneurship that I found interesting is innovation and how every innovation always takes something from the previous innovations before them. In the episode, it details how 4 different men essentially built America during the industrial revolution. Andrew Carnegie had a steel monopoly, John D. Rockefeller essentially created and then was the solo monopolist of the oil industry, and J.P. Morgan had a steel and railroad monopoly and was a major innovator in banking. The United States started to crack down on these types of men during their younger years, with Teddy Roosevelt becoming president and going after big business. Also during this time, Henry Ford was in the process of trying to get his affordable automobile on the market for the masses. He eventually did and perfected the assembly line method of manufacturing and was able to create a ton of jobs with much better pay as well as create a very large sum of cars every day, for cheap. The innovation aspect and how every innovation never strays too far from the previous methods and ideas comes into play here: Henry Ford couldn't have created his affordable automobile without the success of the monopolists, or shall I say entrepreneurs, of beforehand. The mass amounts of steel and oil were necessary to construct the factories and tools/machinery to create the cars as well as run the cars. Just because the big men of old seemed to be out the door, does not mean that their entrepreneurial activities didn't have a huge affect on the new innovations of the future.
The reason why this is so interesting is that this idea continues forward: after Henry Ford revolutionized mass production, every other industry took the assembly line and improved jobs and went about creating their own innovations and delivering them to the masses, just as Henry Ford set out to do and succeeded. Motorcycles, chewing gum, chocolate, makeup, and many more types of products all became better because of previous innovations. And all of it was made possible because of the men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan, who built massive empires which were looked down upon as monopolies even though they also were the biggest reasons for why America become such a prosperous country so quickly.
This aspect of entrepreneurship affects society greatly. As shown in the episode, the many different innovations were the biggest reasons for how America created the all new type of middle class living. The standard of living increased at exceptional rates, do to the entrepreneurs during the industrial revolution. As discussed in the book by Dr. Bylund, all innovations always have some sort of middle ground where they never stray too far from previous innovations to stay feasible and cost effective. Society can stifle this aspect of entrepreneurship as shown in the episode, with how for example Rockefeller dealt with the United States government due to them cracking down on big business, or like how Henry Ford originally struggled with ALAM and how they threatened to hike up the price of his production line by suing for wrongful patent infringement. However, society can also really help with innovations like these, like how after Henry Ford won the race and society painted him as a sort of hero. The interaction between this aspect and society is a very grey one in which a lot of the time there are many regulations put in place and competitors hindering an entrance into a market, scared to be rendered useless and old, like Ford vs ALAM. As discussed in class, this sort of "creative destruction" normally has the ones about to be destroyed fighting tooth and nail to not go down.
