Founders
The lives behind the names on the door: where they came from, the first shop, the first workshop, the first customers.
BUILDERS & VISIONARIES Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA: The Småland Visionary Who Flat-Packed the World
From a small village in Småland, Sweden, Ingvar Kamprad built IKEA, transforming the furniture industry with mail-order sales and the revolutionary flat-pack concept. His journey from selling matches to founding a global empire offers lessons in resilience and customer-centric innovation. Read more →
BUSINESS HISTORY Jamsetji Tata: From Bombay Trading to India's Industrial Dawn
Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata saw beyond the lucrative trade of 19th-century Bombay, envisioning an India forged in steel and powered by its own rivers. This is the story of a merchant who became a nation-builder, laying the foundations for an industrial giant. Read more →
CRAFTSMEN & COMMERCE Josiah Wedgwood: The Staffordshire Potter Who Sold to Queens and Everyone Else
In 18th-century England, Josiah Wedgwood transformed the humble craft of pottery into an industrial powerhouse and a global luxury brand. He pioneered techniques of production and marketing that continue to resonate with entrepreneurs today. Read more →
FOUNDERS & ORIGINS The Spark of an Empire: Konosuke Matsushita and Osaka's Two-Way Socket
Konosuke Matsushita’s entrepreneurial journey began in a cramped Osaka tenement, driven by a simple idea for an improved electrical socket. From these humble origins, he would build one of the world’s most recognized electronics giants, Panasonic. Read more →
BUSINESS HISTORY The Merchant Revolution of Mitsui Takatoshi: Cash, Fixed Prices, and the Birth of Modern Retail in Edo
In the bustling city of Edo, 17th-century Japan, Mitsui Takatoshi challenged centuries of mercantile tradition, introducing radical concepts like cash-only sales and fixed pricing. His dry goods store, Echigoya, didn't just sell fabrics; it laid the groundwork for modern consumer retail. Read more →
BUILDERS & VISIONARIES Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA: The Småland Visionary Who Flat-Packed the World
Read more →
BUSINESS HISTORY Jamsetji Tata: From Bombay Trading to India's Industrial Dawn
Read more →
CRAFTSMEN & COMMERCE Josiah Wedgwood: The Staffordshire Potter Who Sold to Queens and Everyone Else
Read more →
FOUNDERS & ORIGINS The Spark of an Empire: Konosuke Matsushita and Osaka's Two-Way Socket
Read more →
BUSINESS HISTORY The Merchant Revolution of Mitsui Takatoshi: Cash, Fixed Prices, and the Birth of Modern Retail in Edo
Read more →
Entrepreneurs of the world · past, present, future
The people who build
what comes next
The Innovators tells the stories of entrepreneurs from every continent and every century: the merchants, makers and founders who saw a gap in the world and built something to fill it. Where they started, what they risked, what went wrong, and what lasted.
What we cover
Turning points
The decision, the gamble or the failure that changed a company’s course, told as it happened rather than as legend.
Ideas that travelled
How a way of doing business crossed borders, from an Osaka workshop or a Swedish village to cities everywhere.
What comes next
The founders and questions shaping the next chapter of enterprise, written as stories still in progress.
Four ages of enterprise
Enterprise is older than the word for it. We follow it through four ages, and around the world in each.
- 14th–17th centuries
The merchant age
Family houses that financed kings and clothed cities: the Medici bank of Florence, the Fugger of Augsburg, and the Mitsui drapery that opened in Edo in 1673.
- 18th–19th centuries
The industrial age
Factories, foundries and telegraph wires: Josiah Wedgwood’s potteries in Staffordshire, Werner von Siemens in Berlin, Jamsetji Tata in Bombay.
- 20th century
The global century
Small starts that went worldwide: Konosuke Matsushita’s sockets in Osaka, Ingvar Kamprad’s mail-order business in Sweden, the Tokyo workshop of 1946 that became Sony.
- Now and next
The open frontier
Founders at work on energy, health, money and the way we live. Their stories are not finished, and we write them that way.
The podcast
The Founders’ Table
Every Sunday, Jonas and Priya pull up two chairs and talk through the week’s stories from The Innovators: who built what, where, and what the rest of us can learn from how they did it.
The Sunday letter
One email a week: the new story, the new episode, and nothing else.
The Sunday letter
Thank you. The next Sunday letter is on its way to you.