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Founders: #359 The Russian Rockefellers: The Nobel Family Dynasty

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The name of Nobel usually calls to mind Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, and the internationally prestigious prizes that bear his name. But Alfred was only one member of a creative and innovative family who built an industrial empire in prerevolutionary Russia. The saga begins with an emigre from Sweden, Immanuel Nobel, who was an architect, a pioneer producer of steam engines, and a maker of weapons. Immanuel's sons included Alfred; Robert, who directed the family's activities in the Caspian oil fields; and Ludwig, an engineering genius and manufacturing magnate whose boundless energy and fierce determination created the Russian petroleum industry. Ludwig's son Emanuel showed similar mettle, shrewdly bargaining with the Rothschilds for control of the Russian markets and competing head-on with Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell for lucrative world markets. Perhaps no family in history has played so decisive a role in building an industrial empire in an underdeveloped but resource-rich nation. Yet the achievements of the Nobel family have been largely forgotten. When the Bolsheviks came to power, Emmanuel had to flee the country disguised as a peasant. The Nobel empire with its 5

[00:00:00] You and I always talk about this phenomenon that reoccurs throughout the history of entrepreneurship, that you can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. The story you're about to hear is one of the most remarkable industrial odysseys ever told. And at the center is this relationship between a father and his two sons. The founder of this family dynasty was a great inventor, but he wasn't a great entrepreneur. He knew how to build great products, but he didn't pay enough attention to the financial side of his business.…

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