The trouble is that this is not that many steps away from Henry Ford.

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To borrow from Henry Ford, consumers can pick any color car they want, as long as it is green.

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Some say Apple should copy an idea from Henry Ford.

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Or the rumors promised reward: every paratrooper (or combat infantry, or artilleryman, or medic, or whatever) was going to get a free car from Henry Ford when the war was won.

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But the US has shifted away from a Henry Ford economy to an Android economy.

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The design of an automobile assembly line came from a Henry Ford associate who had visited a Chicago slaughterhouse.

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Price sensitivity has existed for millennia, but in just two decades the Internet has fundamentally changed the notion of scarcity in ways no one from Nero to Henry Ford could have imagined.

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Electricity comes from an ancient power plant built by Henry Ford and Thomas Edison.

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"I think Henry Ford had it right from the start, " said John Krafcik, chief executive of Hyundai Motor America and, coincidentally, an ex-Ford engineer.

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Tech geeks today will need to keep their ears and eyes wide open so that they can spot opportunities, observe business and market scenarios and learn from beyond their own shop to achieve a Henry Ford-like success.

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And since the only nonstop route from Beijing to the U.S. on an American carrier was a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit, Henry Ford was chosen to receive the celebrated patient.

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