How Dick Schulze Built Best Buy: Leadership, Resilience, and Business Innovation
After a tornado destroyed his business, Dick Schulze saw what others missed. His response forever changed consumer electronics retail.
Dick Schulze, the founder of Best Buy and EIX, shares his experiences as an entrepreneur and innovator, including how he tripled his income from his boyhood paper route; quit a retail job when his ideas were not valued; started one consumer electronics store, Sound of Music; then transformed that into Best Buy, the largest consumer electronics store chain in the world.
His lessons of finding opportunities in the ruins of dashed plans -- in Schulze's case, a tornado that destroyed Sound of Music but gave birth to the idea for Best Buy -- still resonate today in a new era of uncertainty.
James C Wetherbe
Richard Schulze Distinguished Professor / Rawls College of Business / Texas Tech University
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Cite this Article
DOI: 10.17919/X9RP4Q
Wetherbe, J. (2014, April 29). EIX interview: Dick Schulze, founder of Best Buy. Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange. Retrieved July 25, 2026, from https://eiexchange.com/content/how-dick-schulze-built-best-buy-leadership-resilience-and-busine
Wetherbe, James C. "How Dick Schulze Built Best Buy: Leadership, Resilience, and Business Innovation" Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange. 29 Apr. 2014. Web 25 Jul. 2026 <https://eiexchange.com/content/how-dick-schulze-built-best-buy-leadership-resilience-and-busine>.