This book is about a rich Chinese-Filipino businessman John Gokongwei Jr. ho built his companies into a highly diversified and large business conglomerate over a span of fifty years. This conglomerate has the reputation of being the most diversified in the Philippines when compared to other publicly listed holding firms in the country today. He adopted strategy of diversification by building his own enterprise and by acquiring other companies, this is one of his many ways to gain competitive advantage.
He diversified into food, textiles and garments, retail, power generation, real estate, shopping centers and hotels, aviation, finance and banking, telecommunication, oil exploration, petrochemicals, publishing, convenience store and restaurants which he consolidated by creating a holding company now known as the JG Summit Holdings, Inc. He made all of these in a span of five decades, that no other company in the Philippines can match the number of industry sector he entered. Best practices of an entrepreneur was also discussed, so we can try to replicate what John Gokongwei Jr. as done over the years.
It implements a mix of strategy aimed to gain competitive advantage in business. That turns adversity into opportunity. He shared the wisdom he had gained over his eighty years of his life, emphasized his unwavering faith in the human capacity to surmount barriers, even those barriers were created by human mind. This book even explored the terrain of the entrepreneurial mind and made us realize that entrepreneurship is something that each of us can achieve if only we try hard, dream big, and take risk.
Justify this book for this class. How does it apply to this course? How is it relevant? This book is a study of one of the most successful Chiness-Filipino entrepreneurs in our country, John Gokongwei Jr. , founder of a highly diversified group of companies in our country today. This book endeavors to shed light on the thinking and behavior of an entrepreneur and to illustrate the patterns of successful decision-making. From this book, it gives us an overview of the characteristics of an entrepreneurial mind.
In particular, the personality and leadership style of John Gokongwei Jr. that sets him apart from his fellow entrepreneurs. This book is most relevant in this course primarily on the approaches and strategies of human behavior on the entrepreneurial side of an individual. It examines the leadership skills, abilities and personal traits of John Gokongwei Jr. that enables him to become an entrepreneurial leader, that was greatly shaped by his Chinese Confucian values that contributed to his businesses success.
The human behavior that has been more discussed and emphasized were his competitiveness, hard-work, the importance of education, mentoring and role models, the value of frugality, his willingness to take risks, his creativeness and innovativeness and his shrewd businesses instincts which differs him from the rest. Managers of today needs this skills to cope with the unexpected, in order to survive global competition. We need to identify opportunities and transform them into new business ventures even in the midst of turbulence and rapid change.
Creativeness and innovative management thinking continues to emerge in order to address management challenges in today’s turbulent times. In order to manage different organizations in different situations, that deals adequately in response to the demands of a turbulent and rapidly changing environment. Strength(s) of the book This book inspires individuals and entrepreneurs in the success stories of John Gokongwei Jr. , it also inspires Filipino to become entrepreneurs as well. His entrepreneurial success stories have the capacity to provide inspiration and to give interest in entrepreneurship.
This book gives the idea to his contributions in the Philippines in developing capitalism and entrepreneurship in the region. And how to make his country a great nation. We then realize that an entrepreneurial success will not happen overnight, but it will be a product of years of hard work and sacrifices. With this, we may able to understand the need to develop our inner self in becoming an entrepreneur in order to create jobs for our countrymen and to improve Philippine economy. This is very important especially in the new economy of globalization and today’s turbulent and fast changing times.
Discuss at least one (but not limited to one) important idea you learned from reading this book. Think hard; a new view, idea or notion is important here. “A true entrepreneur must also realize that oftentimes rough and winding, and for some, they never really reach the end of the road. ” John L. Gokongwei Jr. The path to entrepreneurship not only identifies individual qualities and traits in becoming an entrepreneur, it does not impose to set a certain characteristics that one must fit.
This give us a different approach that will allow more freedom to identify certain unique or distinguishing characteristics of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur has to develop a deep understanding of himself, develops the skill to lead others and create strategies that will help his organization prosper in an increasing environment.
