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>It's a rarely studied era More accurate: 100 years ago it was an intensely studied era, as the West struggled to understand what had allowed it to conquer the

>It's a rarely studied era More accurate: 100 years ago it was an intensely studied era, as the West struggled to understand what had allowed it to conquer the whole world. But it is an era that has gone out of fashion. It is not now widely studied. But even now, the subject is not unknown. The person who did the best comparison of modern entrepreneurs and the old sea faring culture was Ted Goranson, in a small pamphlet called "Whale of a Tale." It is tragic that this pamphlet is now out of print. It used to be that you could find a copy on Amazon, but now it seems to be gone. It was only 25 pages, and did a brilliant job showing how the old laws and cultures of the seafaring nations became the basis for the modern understanding of entrepreneurs. I understand that his "whale" story was incorporated into the book he eventually wrote: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Virtual-Enterprise-Cases-Metrics/dp/1567202640/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365609764&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Virtual-Enterprise-Cases-Metrics... I have not read the book so I can not vouch for it. In his pamphlet, Goranson did a great job of arguing that whaling ships were the worlds first Virtual Agile Enterprises. Very insightful reading.

profpjm 14y ago
that's a pretty good pamphlet, thanks for sharing. but unfortunately, age of discovery seafaring ventures and whaling ventures were very different indeed. the former where driven by discovery and intensely entrepreneurial. the latter were driven my mercantilism and commercial routines and more industrial i.e., less entrepreneurial. you'll learn far more about the implicitly human dynamics of coordinated upward defiance (mutiny) and entrepreneurial action studying the age of discovery. that's what mutiny and its bounty does. whaling wasn't part of the age of discovery, as you imply (btw it belies your point that the age of discovery was intensely studied). whaling came later, with england, which was about 100 years behind spain and 200 years behind portugal with regard to seafaring. that being said, english mercantilism and its traditions generated the largest empire in world history. but large bureaucratic empires are not really what we're talking about here; we're talking about agile entrepreneurial ventures.

profpjm 14y ago

that's a pretty good pamphlet, thanks for sharing. but unfortunately, age of discovery seafaring ventures and whaling ventures were very different indeed. the former where driven by discovery and intensely entrepreneurial. the latter were driven my mercantilism and commercial routines and more industrial i.e., less entrepreneurial. you'll learn far more about the implicitly human dynamics of coordinated upward defiance (mutiny) and entrepreneurial action studying the age of discovery. that's what mutiny and its bounty does. whaling wasn't part of the age of discovery, as you imply (btw it belies your point that the age of discovery was intensely studied). whaling came later, with england, which was about 100 years behind spain and 200 years behind portugal with regard to seafaring. that being said, english mercantilism and its traditions generated the largest empire in world history. but large bureaucratic empires are not really what we're talking about here; we're talking about agile entrepreneurial ventures.