Select a successful entrepreneur or innovator. Against the history of the person, examine their reported characteristics, actions and successes, and critically analyse those things that seem to match up to the various theories of entrepreneurship.

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Innovation and Entrepreneurial Studies - Part 1

1.1 Select, with the approval of your tutor, a successful entrepreneur or innovator.  Against the history of the person, examine their reported characteristics, actions and successes, and critically analyse those things that seem to match up to the various theories of entrepreneurship.

1.2 Stan Lee is widely renowned as the major innovator in the history of comic books.  He is famous for the creation of characters such as Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, The X men, Incredible Hulk, Silver Surfer, Iron Man, and Daredevil, among others.  I would like to point out that (in my opinion) Stan Lee is/was an innovator, an intrapreneur, and an entrepreneur.  As will be detailed in this assignment maybe at times his entrepreneurial skills were not as well developed as they could have been, and due to this fact he spent a large chunk of his life being intrapreneurial rather than entrepreneurial.  In retrospect he realises this and (maybe too late) he now is exhibiting himself as a true entrepreneur.

1.3 ‘Stan Lee’ was born on December 28th, 1922 as Stanley Martin Lieber, in New York City.  He was the first child of Romanian immigrants, Jack and Celia Lieber.  They were a relatively poor family struggling to make ends meets.  His father struggled to find work after the great depression of 1929.  This greatly affected his father and left a lasting feeling with Stan “Seeing the demoralising effect that this unemployment had on his spirit, making him feel he just wasn’t needed, gave me a feeling I’ve never been able to shake”. It was a hard time and seeing his family (especially his father getting more depressed due to lack of work) in such a bad state gave Stan the need for escapism.  He had a great love for reading and would often lose himself in the magical world of books, and making his own basic comics to entertain himself.  This love for reading/creating coupled with his pain at his fathers feelings of worthlessness may just have been the seeds that nurtured this precocious talent to achieve what he did.

1.4 As soon as Stan was old enough (maybe because the family was so poor that it was imperative he contribute) he began his working life; at first various part time jobs while he was at school.  His big break came when he got a job at Timely (now called ‘Marvel Comics’), where he got a job as a general gofer (in 1939); doing general office grunt work, proofreading, handling mail, and running whichever errands which were necessary.  Stan was the teenage cousin of the wife of Martin Goodman, owner of Timely, and got the job through another relative, his uncle Robbie who worked for the company.

1.5 His initial big break occurred because; their was too much work for the then two members of comic creating staff to handle, and therefore by default Stan was given his opportunity. The story was a piece of prose in Captain America #3 May 1941, a two-page text ‘filler’ that was needed to qualify the comic for the post offices cheap magazine rate!  It was entitled ‘The Traitors Revenge’ He signed it ‘Stan Lee’ as he felt he should save his real name (and not tarnish it with mere comics) for work he hoped would earn him a Pulitzer Prize!  He simply cut his first name (Stanley) in half and changed the y to a second e (a legend was born!)

1.6 What happened next was sheer luck, as Stan points out himself “Luck seems to deal most of the cards in the game of life”.  In 1941 the two members of the comic creation department (Joe Simon and Jack Kirby) left (for main rivals DC) due to internal problems with Goodman, Stan was the only one left in the department and therefore was ‘temporarily’ put in charge by Goodman until he could find a replacement, but according to Stan, Goodman “had a short attention span and eventually stopped looking”.  So at the tender age of 18, Stan was propelled into being the Editor of Timely Comics.

1.7 Later (1941), Stan found himself in the army (there was a war going on!) but didn’t actually enter the field of combat, instead he was mainly engulfed in the duties of writing training films and various literature, however he still found time (entrepreneurial skills in effect) to do freelance scripts for Timely Comics, to supplement his income.

1.8 In 1944 he returned to his job at Timely.  But even though the company was doing well in the 40’s and 50’s, Stan wasn’t too happy.  He felt that they were making their money and building their success by following trends rather setting the trends, something the innovator in Stan yearned to do.  But he had to follow the owner’s instructions (Goodman), who was set in his way of following the safe bet of trying to follow trends rather than set them (which is far riskier).

1.9 On a personal level, Lee got married to Joan Clayton Boocock on December 5th 1947, and Joan has proved to be a constant source of strength and support throughout his life and maybe critical to his success (as will be illustrated later).

1.10 A good example of Stan’s Entrepreneurial ability (and at the same time highlighting his entrepreneurial faults) was while he was working for Timely he made separate ‘Photo caption’ books through other publishers.  The profits were split equally between Stan and the Publisher, with both making a tidy profit (as the 10,000 books sold out within days of release), he made a couple of different books at different times.  However as he later realised himself, he never thought to make more copies to sell.  In Stan’s own words “I never thought to go back to press!” and he also later (another fault) came to the realisation “It never dawned on me that I had the foundation of a new publishing business if I would have stayed with it”.

1.11 Up until now, Stan was a great comic writer but his level of innovation was nothing special.  What happened next was the making of the man in the sense of innovation.  Stan was on the verge of quitting the company in the early 60’s, he had had enough of the ‘following’ the trends, rather than ‘setting’ them mentality which he felt was stifling his creativity and level of innovation.  He was all set to hand in his resignation, when his wife Joan suggested he go ahead and create the type of characters he wants to irrespective of what the owner is wanting.  Because the worst that will occur is that he will be fired, and as he wants to quit anyway that’s not a problem.  He went on to create ‘The Fantastic Four’, who proved to be a resounding commercial success.  The reason they were successful was, in Stan’s own words “I wrote stories that wouldn’t insult the intelligence of an older reader, stories with interesting characterisation, more realistic dialogue, and plots that hadn’t been recycled a thousand times before.  Above all, stories that wouldn’t hew to all the comic book clichés of years past”.  He wanted to bring an element of realism to his comics.  He imagined how real people might act if they suddenly gained superpowers; confused, conflicted and not necessarily eager for the responsibility.  And that was the beginning of the Marvel age of comics.  He went on to create characters such as Spiderman, The X men, Incredible Hulk, Silver Surfer, Iron Man, and Daredevil.  He made them as innovative/creative as possible, giving them real life problems and angst, and also bringing his unique sense of humour into the comic book genre (as illustrated by the wise cracking Spiderman, who’s alter ego Peter Parker is always having emotional/personal problems).  Lee also revolutionised the industry with the introduction of the now industry wide used ‘Marvel Method’ of writing comics (gives the basic plot to the artist, who draws/develops it as he sees fit and then Stan would add the captions at the end).

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1.12 From there everything went from strength to strength (with the standard booms and slumps), culminating in the recent big box office production of movies such as, Spiderman, Daredevil, The X Men, and Incredible Hulk.  But Lee, being still just an employee never made the kind of money he could have made if he had gone into business for himself.  However, today, he has been freed from his lifetime contract at Marvel, but still remains Chairman Emeritus of Marvel Media.  He is free to pursue his own agenda now, with rights to his own name, likeness, and any new ...

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