Medtronic: A Rocky Road On the Way to Success
With the creation of the first battery-powered pacemaker, Medtronic entered the medical community with a splash. Today, Medtronic's pacemaker is a silver-dollar sized device that assists about 300,000 new patients every year worldwide. Medtronic experienced the growing pains typical of any small company struggling to break into the big time. By 1960, the company had run out of money, and Bakken and Hermundslie were rapidly running out of time. Not a single banker or investor would put up the badly needed cash and the two struggling founders barely found time to woo potential investors. They juggled repair work and equipment distribution duties with the creation of custom electronic devices for physicians and the mass production of the model 5800 pacemakers. They were drowning in their own attempts to keep the company capitalized.

It gradually became clear that Medtronic had become so distracted from its original vision that bankers and investors had no idea what the company actually did. With this realization, Bakken, with the help of the company's Board of Directors, drafted the defining Tao for Medtronic.

The founders of almost every company sit down at some point in their company's evolution to write a vision or mission statement, but history shows us that it is not the statement itself that creates success, longevity, or dominance. It is the ability to stay inspired and re-create that statement on a daily basis. Medtronic has leaned on these six statements for more than 40 years, and judging by its dominant presence—the company has been called "the best medical device company in the world" and the "Microsoft of the medical device industry"—such devotion to Tao is a worthwhile endeavor.

Singapore: From Nearly Nothing to Number One
Singapore's rate of economic development is nothing short of astonishing. The tiny island nation began as a third world country with a per capita GNP of less than US$320 in 1961. By the end of 2002, Singapore had transformed itself into an advanced developing nation with a per capita GNP of approximately US$37,000; 115 times its original GNP and on par with that of the U. S. Consistently rated as one of the top ten business environments in the world and one of the best places for offshore manufacturing, Singapore demonstrates that size does not limit the creation of wealth.

When Singapore began the process of economic transformation, however, the situation was much less ideal. When Kuan Yew Lee became Singapore's Prime Minister in 1959, he became the leader of a mosquito-infested swamp filled with indigent people living in crowded housing crammed amidst pig and chicken farms. Faced with a complete lack of natural resources, little infrastructure and a poorly developed educational system, Lee realized that Singapore's people were his best and only resource. In the beginning, the Singaporean work force was so poorly educated and lacking in any real skills that the government could only set a goal of full employment. So in 1961, it set the goal of achieving full employment in labor-intensive industries. In short, the government hoped to gain a foothold in the international markets by offering the cheapest labor around. Singapore faced considerable difficulty, however, when it lost its membership in the Malaysian Federation and the British decided to close their naval bases, reducing Singapore's economy by a drastic 25%. By 1965, though, Singapore's economy had recovered and was starting to grow.