By Phạm Hà, Founding President & CEO, LuxGroup®
In 1908, Harvard Business School was founded to educate leaders for the industrial age. A year later, in colonial Vietnam, Bạch Thái Bưởi leased three ships and entered a market dominated by French and Chinese operators. In Boston, business leadership was becoming a field of study. In Vietnam, Bưởi was learning it on the river, with his own capital and future at stake.
As I study strategy and leadership today, I often return to his story. I do not mean that Bưởi anticipated theories developed a century later. I mean that he confronted questions every business leader still faces: How do you enter a market that appears closed? How do you earn trust? How do you turn one person’s determination into an organization’s capability? And what is business ultimately for?
Three leased ships. A conviction no one could lease.
Bưởi entered the shipping business in 1909 with three leased vessels. He had neither a large fleet nor a capital advantage. What he understood, however, was something his competitors could not claim as their own: the desire of Vietnamese passengers to travel aboard Vietnamese ships.
He sent speakers to the docks to rally support. Passengers were invited to contribute what they could; some placed coins in a collection tube aboard his ships. Those small contributions represented something much larger. People were purchasing a journey, but they were also participating in an act of national self-belief.
Patriotism alone, of course, could not keep a ship on schedule. Shared purpose might persuade a passenger to board once. Reliable service would determine whether that passenger returned. Bưởi turned public goodwill into a business that could operate, expand, and endure.
That is his first lesson for leaders: purpose must move people, while the product must earn their continued choice.
From leasing ships to building one
An alert entrepreneur can recognize an opportunity to lease three ships. A farsighted entrepreneur must ask a harder question: If those ships were no longer available tomorrow, what capabilities would my business still possess?
Bưởi gradually acquired vessels, developed a shipyard, and assembled the people needed to run it. On September 7, 1919, Bình Chuẩn, designed and built by Vietnamese workers, was launched in Hải Phòng. The following year, it sailed to Sài Gòn. This was more than the voyage of a new vessel. It was a public demonstration of an industrial capability that many had underestimated: Vietnamese people could build and operate a ship of their own.
Steel can be purchased. Machinery can be studied. What cannot be bought ready-made is a team capable of building a ship together, operating it, and taking responsibility for the name on its hull. Bình Chuẩn was the work of many hands and minds. Bưởi’s vision mattered because he enabled others to make it real.
The same is true of a company today. If every decision, initiative, and solution must pass through its founder, the company may be prominent without being strong. A leader does more than name a destination. A leader builds an organization capable of reaching it.
Why the names on the ships mattered
Bưởi gave his vessels names that evoked Vietnamese history and identity. To him, a brand was more than a way to distinguish one service from another. It told people whom the enterprise belonged to, whom it served, and where it hoped to take them.
Today, many Vietnamese businesses aspire to compete internationally. That ambition requires technology, capital, sound management, and global standards. It does not require us to abandon what makes us distinctive. Bưởi learned from foreign techniques and business practices while building a fleet that expressed a Vietnamese identity.
To me, that is the spirit of a nationally minded entrepreneur: open enough to learn, capable enough to execute, and confident enough to put the name of one’s country on what one creates.
Building wealth—and a stronger country
Bưởi’s ambitions extended beyond shipping. He invested in printing and publishing and launched Khai Hóa, a newspaper that encouraged education and enterprise. In his work, commerce and the development of his fellow citizens were connected.
I think of this as enterprise grounded in humanity. Humanity does not make a business less rigorous. It asks that a business earn profit through real capability, treat people responsibly, and leave more value in society than it takes away.
Bưởi’s path was neither smooth nor free of failure. He faced formidable competitors and the constraints of colonial rule. That is why a contemporary’s assessment carries such weight. After Bưởi’s death in 1932, the scholar Nguyễn Văn Tố called him the foremost “economic hero” of the country’s business world.
An economic hero need not win every contest. Such a person does something harder: opens a possibility that others had not yet dared to believe was theirs.
The ship we must build now
More than a century has passed. Vietnam has larger companies, wider markets, and more routes to the world than Bưởi could have imagined. Yet his challenge remains: Are we merely selling a journey, or are we building the capabilities that will allow Vietnamese people to travel farther on their own terms?
I study business so I can ask that question more rigorously of myself and of LuxGroup. A House of Small Giants will mean something only if each business within it has a distinct identity, leaders with the authority and ability to act, and the capacity to innovate and create value for others. Our Vietnam Waterways 2045 vision must likewise be built from tangible capabilities: people, design, capital, engineering, operations, and trust.
Bạch Thái Bưởi left us Bình Chuẩn. His greater legacy is the conviction that Vietnamese people can learn from the world, master their own work, and use business success to help their country prosper.
Steel forms the hull. People make the voyage possible. Purpose determines how far that voyage can take a generation.
