Andrew Carnegie, born 1835, was an industrialist and philanthropist who soon became an influential entrepreneur. In 1848, he and his family immigrated to the United States from Scotland with little to no money in their pockets. They settled in Pennsylvania where he later worked as a secretary and telegraph operator at the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. From there, Carnegie slowly moved his way up the social ladder and became superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division of Pennsylvania Railroad. Andrew Carnegie is an entrepreneur because he saw an opportunity to create and run a business, despite the risk and responsibility he would have to assume. With the ability to make his own economic decisions and invest his money where he wanted, Andrew Carnegie created a powerful and influential steel company with the help of the free enterprise system.
In the 1860s, Carnegie saw the immense need for iron products in the midst of the Civil War. It was then that his interests began to shift from telegraphs and railroads to
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If one wants to win this competition, putting the interests of the customers first and being innovative is a necessity. It is imperative to keep customers coming and make the most sales. Carnegie was one of the first to practice vertical integration, which is the ownership of companies at all levels of production. With this innovative tactic, he could buy railroad companies an iron mines, reducing the costs of the production of steel. If he owned the companies that owned the iron mines, then he did not have to pay those companies to mine the iron. Another innovative tactic Carnegie used was the Bessemer process. On a trip to Europe, Carnegie witnessed the use of this process named after Sir Henry Bessemer of England, and took it back to the United States with him. The Bessemer process allowed for a cheap and efficient way to produce steel in larger