The Success Stories of the Business World’s Top Game Changers

Investopedia, the online business, finance, investing and marketing resource defines ‘Game changer’ as a) a person who’s considered a visionary, and b) a company which alters its business strategy and consequently conceives a new business strategy entirely.

Therefore, a game changer can be seen as a person or company who/that “changes the way that something is done, thought about or made.”

So who are the business world’s top game changers and what insights can we derive from their success stories? Here are three you’re likely to be familiar with, and no, although it might seem as though having ‘Mark’ for a first name is a prerequisite for success, give a little thought to the ‘Bills’, ‘Richards’ and ‘Warrens’.

Mark Cuban

When the word ‘success’ is mentioned it’s difficult not to think about American Mark Cuban, currently owner of Landmark Theatres, the Dallas Mavericks and Magnolia Pictures, not to mention finding the time to be the chairman of AXS TV, a ‘shark investor’ on the wildly popular series Shark Tank, and the author of ‘How to Win at the Sport of Business’.

The key company in his success story was MicroSolutions but it wasn’t just a matter of stumbling across a gap in the market that needed filling, his success was due to, amongst other things, his willingness to look to successful companies for inspiration – Cuban reportedly studied Microsoft and looked up to its founder Bill Gates – and his ability to improvise.

After selling MicroSolutions for $30 million he founded AudioNet (now Broadcast.com) which he sold to Yahoo, after which came the Dallas Mavericks and everything else.
Here are six of Mark Cuban’s ‘12 rules for start-ups’ in his Entrepreneur article of the same name.

1. Don’t start a company unless it’s doing something you love

2. Only hire people who you believe will love working for your company

3. “Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them”

4. Keep your organisation flat, i.e. one level of management

5. “Never buy swag”

6. Make the jobs at your company fun for your employees

Mark Pincus

Although he’s back on the billionaires list, Mark Pincus’s fortune had dropped from $2 billion to $780 million and he also stepped down as CEO of Zynga – a highly successful maker of online social games – but that’s precisely why he’s included on this list.

Just because you’ve achieved success doesn’t mean you’ll always be successful, nor does it mean that because you’ve gone through a rough patch things will always be that way – the future is unwritten.

In 2009 Pincus was named ‘CEO of the Year’ at the ‘Crunchies Technology Awards’ and within just four years after founding Zynga – Bubble Safari, FarmVille and Mafia Wars are some of their most popular games – it had become a $1 billion company.

Pincus had a rocky road to success with Zynga and admits there were many mistakes made that he wishes he could make right. “I did every horrible thing in the book, too, just to get revenues right away.”

But Pincus and Zynga also did a lot of good, including donating the proceeds from some of Zynga’s games to Japan’s ‘Save the Children Earthquake Emergency Fund’.

Mark Zuckerberg

No article about the world’s leading game changers would be complete without a section on Mark Zuckerberg – that’s something we can all agree upon; moreover, what would life be like without the ‘Social Network’?

In addition to creating the social network – Facebook now has over one billion members – and changing the way the world gossips, Mark Zuckerberg also became the world’s youngest billionaire and although he was fortunate in many ways – he studied at the exclusive Academy of Phillips Exeter along with Harvard – his success story is nothing shy of remarkable.

“Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.” This is an important quote for a number of reasons and one that you, as an entrepreneur with an interest in changing the way things are done, thought about or made, should take note of.

The world’s most successful entrepreneurs rarely start out with the intention of accumulating great wealth, though what they do intend is to identify market and social needs and create products and services that fill the voids these needs have created.

This is exemplified in the following quote, “I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.” That’s a personal/social need that became a market need that became the story of the social network, a game changer if there ever was one.

This is exemplified in the following quote, “I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.” That’s a personal/social need that became a market need that became the story of the social network, a game changer if there ever was one.

These are three of the business world’s top game changers – what’s standing in the way of you making your way onto that list?

Regus ZA at regus.co.za is a branch of the multinational corporation that is known for providing a wide range of quality flexible workspaces. They not only have serviced offices but also virtual services.