Fordlandia: Henry Ford Downfall

Master in Business Administration

Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship

KPA 1153

Prof. Madya Dr. Noor Azlinna Binti Azizan

Individual Assignment

The Unsuccessful Side of Henry Ford

Mohd Asyraf Bin Othman

KBA 14024

1 Introduction To Early Life of Henry Ford

Famed automobile manufacturer Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863, on his family's farm in Wayne County, near Dearborn, Michigan. His father, William Ford (1826–1905), was born in County Cork, Ireland, to a family that was originally from Somerset, England and his mother, Mary Litogot Ford (1839–1876), was born in Michigan as the youngest child of Belgian immigrants. Henry Ford's siblings were Margaret Ford (1867–1938); Jane Ford (c. 1868–1945); William Ford (1871–1917) and Robert Ford (1873–1934).

When Ford was 13 years old, his father gifted him a pocket watch, which the young boy promptly took apart and reassembled. Friends and neighbours were impressed, and requested that he fix their timepieces too, gaining the reputation of a watch repairman. Ford was devastated when his mother died in 1876. His father expected him to eventually take over the family farm, but he despised farm work.

Unsatisfied with farm work, Ford left home the following year in 1879 at the age of 16 to take an apprenticeship as a machinist in Detroit, first with James F. Flower & Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. Detroit. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm, where he became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. He was later hired by Westinghouse to service their steam engines. During this period Ford also studied bookkeeping at Goldsmith, Bryant & Stratton Business College in Detroit.

In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company. After his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the...