Tucker: The Man and His Dream is a biographical movie from 1988 about Preston Tucker. The movie stars well-know actor Jeff Bridges, or The Dude. If you've seen The big Lebowski, you know what I'm talking about. This movie however isn't about bowling, parties, and crime. It's about something better, entrepreneurship. Jeff Bridges plays the happy-go-lucky and innovative automobile entrepreneur, Preston Tucker. If you are unfamiliar with the story of Preston Tucker, I recommend watching the movie or reading about him before reading this blog. I will be pointing out how points in the movie that highlight aspects of entrepreneurship and how they affected society at the time.
From the get go, you can confidently assume that Tucker is an individual thinker. The movie is set in the 1940's, as that's when Tucker created the idea of a new type of automobile. When you think about the time, people got all of their information from the newspaper, not Tucker though. He was unlike everyone else. When everyone was raving about prefab housing, he doubted their quality. But Tucker, the magazine says they are strong and safe. Not to Tucker, he needed to see what's behind an idea and how it came about before he believed in it. Being an individual thinker is very important in entrepreneurship. First of all, how would you be able to create something new without being able to think for yourself. More importantly through, entrepreneurs need to be able fight for their ideas. If you couldn't think as an individual, you would never be able to start a business. As soon as someone showed any doubt in your ideas you would fold in on yourself. Tucker has a saying for when people don't believe in him: Hold that tiger! When he starts chanting this, you know he is about to prove someone wrong.
In business, there is an idea called creative destruction. Creative destruction is what happens when a new and innovative idea comes along that threatens existing businesses. The existing businesses are usually forced to adapt or they will perish. An example of this is Netflix and Blockbuster. The idea of creative destruction is the aspect of entrepreneurship I want to focus on from the movie.
Tucker's innovation was a new type of automobile. This automobile contained features that would make it the car of the future. Those features included seatbelts, turning headlights, fuel injection, disc brakes, padded dash, pop-out windows, and an aerodynamic body style. Who would have thought that all you had to do was care for your customers in order to be created. I guess that's just how things were in the 40's. After all though, these were all new ideas that excited consumers all over America. Society was happy about the idea of buying a safer and better car than what they had.
Unfortunately, your business competition is also a part of society. This new automobile scared the big Detroit automobile manufacturers. Therefore, they fired back. It started with spreading lies about the car and eventually led to a lawsuit. In the end, the tucker company was put out by the companies that already ran the automobile industry. I'm sorry if this isn't the happy ending you were looking forward to. Only 50 Tucker cars able to be produced and sold. However, there is a greater point. Beside the point, this is very unlikely to happen today as the U.S. is better about the free enterprise. When you have an idea that is truly creatively destructive, your competition will try to terrorize you. If you see this as an entrepreneur, it's important to realize that you are on the right track.
