No Fear of Failure: Real Stories of How Leaders Deal with Risk and Change

Chapter Eight

LIU CHUANZHI: PERSEVERANCE

In any entrepreneurial venture, there are fundamental challenges starting with the need to innovate, compete, and grow an idea into a global business. It is a difficult, high-risk journey that few complete successfully. For Liu Chuanzhi, founder of Beijing-based Lenovo Group Ltd., the fourth-largest personal computer manufacturer in the world, there was another far more daunting obstacle, namely, the limitations of China's centrally planned economy during the 1980s when China's government discouraged private enterprise. Despite these monumental challenges and countless setbacks, Liu's tiny computer company, started in 1984 with only eleven employees, grew into a global powerhouse, one that twenty years ...