Genius

by Michael Cronin

Created on: October 09, 2010   Last Updated: October 11, 2010

Howard Hughes was born into a wealthy family in 1905. Howard was a drop-out of Rice University. He inherited one million dollars from his parents and went on to become the first billionaire in North America. His amazing and, at times, overwhelming drive to succeed was often fueled by the people that told him that he could not achieve the things that he set out to do. While he separated his business from his personal life, the businesses that he started and involved himself in were closely knit with his greatest passions which were aviation, film-making, and engineering. Among his many achievements were the production and direction of the film Hell’s Angels (1930) which went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for best cinematography. During the three year filming process of Hell’s Angels he became a very accomplished pilot and then went on to start the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932. Hughes Aircraft Company became the biggest private contractor to the US government in 1944. They tried to force him to step down as president of the company. Hughes sold the company to a medical research organization that he created to avoid and escape the government intervention. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute remains today the second largest philanthropic organization next to Bill Gates’ foundation.

Howard Hughes prided himself on always having what he considered to be a great team. He surrounded himself with people that had both a strong work ethic and that were also dedicated to perfection. Because he had a very controlling personality, this forced him to be as hands-on as much as possible. This hands-on style of leadership inspired the employees that he worked with by showing them that each one of them was an important and integral part of the organization. Today, loyalty is rarely seen as a relationship between employers and employees. Howard was known as not only extremely loyal to the products that he produced, but also to his employees. These business projects of his were, after all, his passions. Later in his life he suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder and an addiction to pain medication and lived as a recluse for the last twenty years of his life. While his business practices were sometimes considered unpopular, he always attempted to produce the best product that he possibly could. This sometimes involved going way over budget in both aircraft design and film-making. In spite of this, he continued to amass a huge fortune. In 1976 he died without a will and Hughes Aircraft Company was eventually sold to GM for five billion dollars.

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