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>> Okay [Background Music]. Management, technology, ethics, capital, globalization, free market, strategy, branding, promotion, innovation. I'm Miguel Garcia [phonetic] and this is Fundamentals of Management and Marketing for non-business majors.

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>> Entrepreneurship is the creation of new ways of meeting needs that can be through new products, new processes, new services, new markets, new technologies, you name it. But key to entrepreneurial success is the fit among the entrepreneurs, the product concept, the resources, the entry strategy and the opportunity. And for one company the opportunity came in the form of a fire. Around 1915 in Orange, New Jersey there was a fire at one of the Edison Manufacturing company plants, specifically the plant that built the Edison phonographs, the very first record players. Rather than stop production, the Edison Company hired a furniture company to start building the Edison phonographs cabinets. This small furniture company they hired started licensing the turntables so they could sell both the phonograph cabinet as well as the turntable. But in order to sell more they needed to complement that with the records. At that time there were no record stores. So people had to buy their records at the furniture store. So this furniture company created a label that soon became a top notch choice for race records during the 1920s. Imagine now that all your favorite music was released by the same record label. Well, if you were African American back in the 1920s, odds are that that was the case. What makes the story even more interesting is that this record label was the same one that was started by the furniture company we've been talking about. Its roster of artists included Ma Rainey, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Ethel Waters, Blind Lemon Jefferson, most of the African American blues and jazz performers of the day.

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So this furniture company that we've been talking about was no more or no less than the Wisconsin Chair Company located in Port Washington, Wisconsin. Who ended up founding Paramount Records and locating it in the nearby town of Grafton. And this is how in Grafton, Wisconsin they end up recording music that wasn't for the Midwestern working class descendants of German and Scandinavian cabinet makers. And it wasn't either for the Lutheran boys and girls to dance to at the social. So Paramount Music was for people from the south to the point that Paramount by the early thirties had recorded virtually every great musician of early jazz and blues in this country. Their collection of artists of color was monumental. It was historic. And this is how in the middle of the cornfields of Wisconsin in Grafton, a town that had never seen a black person outside of the porters of the northwestern or Milwaukee road trains, end up inviting the best black singers and guitar players from the Mississippi Delta.

>> The song was recorded in 1930.

>> "Last Kind Word Blues," Geeshie Wiley.

>> Geeshie Wiley's eerie lament.

>> Imagine being in the room while Geeshie's recording this song.

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>> The original 78 of "Last Kind Word Blues" was released by Paramount Records.

>> So the reason why a bunch of white guys in Port Washington, Wisconsin who made furniture got in to the music business was the same reason that some of today's entrepreneurs have. Why did iTunes start? iTunes started because Apple needed to have a supply of portable recordings to put on its iPods. iTunes was started in order to sell iPods just like Paramount Records was started to help sell Paramount, or Wisconsin Chair Company phonograph machines. And just to conclude, remember Milton Friedman? He talked about the wonders of the market and how the market brings people together.

>> Literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil. People who don't speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met. When you go down to the store and buy this pencil, you are in effect trading a few minutes of your time for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people.

>> In the case of Paramount Records, we can see how the market brought together people from different races, people from different cultures, people with different tastes, different religions, different backgrounds, but they all came together thanks to the free market.

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>> This course was made possible by the Wisconsin School of Business Innovation Fund.