Nancy F. Koehn, a professor at Harvard Business School professor writes about six entrepreneurs and the great brands they built. She shows how these founders lived and worked during periods of widespread change.

Koehn says that these founders understood the profound effects that socioeconomic change has on what customers want, have, and can afford as much as on what companies make-and were masters at exploiting the enormous business opportunities these demand-side shifts created.

Four of these people made things: Wedgwood’s earthenware, Heinz’s bottled pickles, Lauder’s cosmetics, and Dell’s personal computers were, and of course still are, tangible products.

The other two entrepreneurs created “encounters” that proved appealing to consumers: Field’s department store environment and Schultz’s café experience.

Much of what these six entrepreneurs accomplished, especially early on, was a result of improvising—of making it up as they went along.

All of the above brands were developed during periods when demand-side shifts were altering consumers’ priorities. This kind of thing happens in all historical epochs, of course, but in each of the six cases, social and economic changes were racing forward more rapidly than usual. The brands analyzed here thus offered quicker potential connections between consumers’ shifting wants, on the one hand, and increasing entrepreneurial possibilities, on the other.

Finally, each of the six great entrepreneurs also created companies, which in five of the six cases still bear the name of the founding entrepreneurs.

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