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Who Made America? | Innovators | Georges Doriot

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Doriot kept a stopwatch on his desk. "Sometimes I use it to see how long it takes someone in a meeting to tell me the same thing three times," he explained. Photo: (right) Corbis Venture Capital A Frenchman with a cool eye formed a publicly traded company to assess thousands of business proposals -- and funded the best ones, inventing the modern practice of venture capitalism. Management Expert Georges Doriot was a pioneer in the development of venture capital in the 1950s. Born in France in 1899, he came to the U.S. to get an M.B.A. and extended his stay, working for an investment bank and teaching at Harvard Business School. One of his most popular courses was on business start-ups. Over a 40-year teaching career, he would influence thousands of top students, including Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx. Improvements for the Army During World War II, Doriot joined the U.S. Army. He was given the rank of lieutenant colonel and assigned to a research and development role in military plan

Who Made America? | Innovators | Georges Doriot 1899, Paris, France 1987, Boston, MA Doriot kept a stopwatch on his desk. "Sometimes I use it to see how long it takes someone in a meeting to tell me the same thing three times," he explained. Photo: (right) Corbis Venture Capital A Frenchman with a cool eye formed a publicly traded company to assess thousands of business proposals -- and funded the best ones, inventing the modern practice of venture capitalism. Management Expert Georges Doriot was a pioneer in the development of venture capital in the 1950s. Born in France in 1899, he came to t

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