Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Leaders: What the Airline Industry Can Teach Us About Leadership

Entrepreneurs, Managers and Leaders examines the role that business leaders play in shaping industries and how the evolving context of industries shapes leaders in turn. This co-evolutionary process of leadership and industry development is told through the story of the American airline industry across the 20th century. Entrepreneurs, who explored a variety of different airline concepts in search of a viable business model, dominate the industry’s early history. As the industry evolved, a new breed of managers emerged who built a dominant business model that enabled their companies to grow dramatically. Later, after the industry matured, leaders took center-stage as agents of change to rebuild and revitalize the industry.

The lessons to be drawn from the experience of the airlines and their executives will be of interest to business leaders in industries across a wide spectrum. Despite the indelible mark that many individuals have made on their industry, writers on industry evolution-concerning the airlines or any other industry-have rarely factored in leadership as a way of explaining or understanding that evolution. Entrepreneurs, Managers and Leaders seeks to paint a fuller picture of the interdependent relationship between the actions of leaders, the context of their times, and the evolution of an industry.