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ISBN 9781119695929 (Hardcover)
ISBN 9781119695943 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781119695899 (ePub)
Cover Design: Paul McCarthy
Cover Image: © Getty Images | EveMilla
I dedicate this book to my father, Jianxu Xu, and my mother, Yanyun Lin. Although we have been apart for such a long time, I brought their love, dedication, and work ethic with me as I traveled the world. This is as much their story as it is my own.
Prologue
When I first landed on American soil in 1991, I had little money and even less direction. Precisely 21 years later, in 2012, I sat next to President Barack Obama at a roundtable discussion with fellow CEOs, sharing my policy recommendations about American entrepreneurship and manufacturing.
During the intervening years, I created a company in America and built a factory there to manufacture its products, realizing my version of the American Dream. In this book, I describe how I did it. As I hope to convince you, the American Dream remains vital and accessible to all of us, so long as we're willing to burn—igniting that flame within and pursuing our passion with courage and creativity, innovating and adapting to our constantly changing society.
It took me a while to activate and stoke my own internal flames. Growing up, I'd trained in China to become a diplomat. After this career path became impossible, I secured a visa to the United States with dreams of becoming a journalist. The best job I could find after graduating with my master's degree was for a medical device company, performing low‐end administrative work for $19,000 a year. I could only pivot to a new life of purpose when I followed the path of many immigrants to America. Mobilizing my experience, savvy, intuition, and professional skills, I became an entrepreneur, creating products that filled a specific market niche.
Like many immigrants, I succeeded in business by using my cross‐cultural background to reimagine stale consumer categories and places, infusing them with new meaning and value. It took an immigrant like me to see Chesapeake Bay as a beacon of nature and peace rather than as ugly and polluted, as many of my friends and neighbors regarded it. This piece of real estate exercised such a hold on me that it became enmeshed in my personal and professional identities. It's the place I've called home since moving to the United States, and it's the region on which I took a huge financial gamble in opening a factory. Whether you're an entrepreneur, business leader, or simply interested in America's ongoing business strength, I hope you'll come away from this book appreciating the contributions of immigrants, and be inspired to look at landscapes, product categories, and social problems with new eyes.
I also hope you'll think a bit differently about innovation, that cornerstone of American prosperity. The word “innovation” usually conjures up groundbreaking technical breakthroughs. To create a diverse and robust economy, however, entrepreneurs