Tailoring a speech to the speaker's personality is essential. In this case, we have a senior statesman of industry who is uncomfortable with extensive quotes and anything but situational humor. 

Speaker imposed constraints present interesting challenges in developing an impactful presentation. 

OverViews example speech was prepared for F.James McDonald, president, General Motors Corporation. It was presented at a dinner promoting free enterprise. 

A Utopia of One

When Samuel Clemens was a newspaper editor, someone came in to complain that a large spider was delivered inside his morning paper. "What's the spider doing in my paper?" he asked.

"The spider," Clemens said, "was merely going through your paper to see who was not advertising -- so he could go to the person's store, spin a web over the door, and never be bothered again."

Anything that is worthwhile, is worth advertising... That's certainly true of free enterprise.

With each generation, we need to resell this remarkable system of ours.  That's why events like this are so important -- to take inventory for ourselves and to sell our children on their free enterprise inheritance.

So we ought to sell free enterprise, yet in many ways its a hard sell.

That's because the competitors we're up against are the utopians -- the idealists who have painted such spectacular alternative worlds for us as: Plato's Republic...Shangri-la...New Atlantis...Eldorado... Arcadia... Camelot...

Contrast such dreams of man-made Edens to the mundane image of a free enterprise society and, well, free enterprise comes off as an incredible bore. So boring, in fact, that I would be hard pressed to name a handful of poets, playwrights, or novelists who
ever waxed eloquent on the beauty of a free market system.

Why is that?  Why can the utopians capture our imaginations while we free enterprise advocates come across as bland?

Well, for one, utopian concepts -- of philosopher kings and collectivist schemes -- offer an irresistible return to childhood where all-loving parents made everything easy for us.

In contrast, free enterprise lays it all on adult shoulders. It stresses the qualities of prudence...steadfastness...thrift.... hard work... self-reliance... maturity. Boring stuff.

Even more, utopians offer us a finish line. They envision a perfect state of affairs, then suggest that all we have to do is create it, and there will be no further need for change... such static perfection certainly sounds appealing.

In contrast, free enterprise offers no such calm. How can it?

Each day the individual goes into the marketplace and makes new decisions -- based on his and her enlightened self iinterest -- which determine the very shape and substance of the economy. What could be less stable, less secure, than a society which is redefining itself every single day?

So here you have the dilemma of selling free enterprise. 

The difference is between utopians making promises, and free enterprise offering only opportunities.

"Promise" and "opportunity" are not synonyms.

Promises are guarantees, opportunities are only choices.

That utopians have not once lived up to their guarantees seems to be missed here. That utopians deliver only bureaucracies, limitations, and scarcities is always overlooked.

Free enterprise offers mere choices. You don't have to take up an opportunity. It's there if you want to work toward it. Your choice.

That's the real difference.

Free enterprise allows each individual the freedom to choose.  It is a system in which you can have, not one utopia, but as many utopias as you have people to create them.

You can have a utopia of one.

Free enterprise is the most tolerant utopian idea that has ever been, or ever will be. It does not demand that you be of any specific race, creed, sex or nation. It doesn't tell you what
religion, or lack of religion, you should have.  You are free to apply the fruits of your labors to any of these, or to none of them. You are free to create a utopia of one.

The intellectuals have always resisted this idea. They've felt that the common man was too common -- too vulgar to make the right decisions.

In free enterprise we believe there is no such thing as a common man. To stand on one's own, to dream even impossible dreams, to shape the good life as you perceive it, these are the acts of uncommon men and women.

So we only can offer opportunities for uncommon effort, but today, that may well be enough. Those opportunities have never been more exciting.

For the first time in history, for example, the prospect of fostering a peaceful and prosperous world is within reach.

A global society has always been the dream of utopians.

Today it is becoming a reality because of the must mundane of human enterprises -- open trade in goods, services, capital investments, technology, and ideas.

America, which leads as a world citizen, has become a world economy, one in which our people can choose between the best products and prices the world has to offer.

This world economy is fostering economic dependencies which tie the fates of diverse peoples together... economic dependencies that make global hostilities far less attractive.

And at the same time, global free enterprise fosters personal independence -- providing more jobs and raising standarrds of living for more people.. fighting the greatest threat of all to world peace, the desperation that comes with hunger.

So we have tremendous opportunity. And whenever the opportunities are great, so are the responsibilities ...in this case, the responsibility to step up to world competition... to be truly
world class in our products, our prices, and our responsiveness to ever-changing markets.

As you know, some companies, some entire industries, are having trouble staying afloat in the tidal wave of global competition.

Yet I believe John Kennedy was right when he said "a rising tide raises all boats." It can if companies are not too firmly anchored by old paradigms.

A rising tide can raise all boats if we are willing to rise with new solutions. Today, that's technology and enlightened management.

Technology has always been the way to increase productivity. It's an ever better solution today with the advent of microprocessors, the heart and nervous system of the modern computer.

These technologies not only allow us to work smarter, but they do away with the drudgery, the repetitious,  dirty, and sometimes hazardous jobs... freeing people to do what only they can do best -- to think, to create, to innovate.

At General Motors, for example, we are in the midst of the greatest transition to computer-based technology in every plant, engineering process, and product development cycle.

And to make sure our people are smarter than their smart machines, we're making unprecedented investments in education and training -- upwards of $232 million this year alone.

The same challenges which inspired technological innovations have redefined the way in which decisions are made. We can no longer afford the luxury of making all major decisions from the top echelon.. the pace of change is simply too great.

To this end, General Motors has completely reorganized our five car and truck divisions into fewer, more autonomous operations. And we've launched similar efforts in Europe.

These examples, of course, come from the largest industrial corporations in the world. Most people, more than half of all Americans, in fact, work in companies of 100 people or fewer. But the same trends apply.

World competition is demanding innovation, advanced technologies, and new ways of more fully involving people.

All across America I am seeing a genuine renaissance of the competitive spirit... a surge of competitive inspired creativity. And in our free enterprise system, in every case the individual is the benefactor -- as consumer, shareholder, as employee and
employer.

I see more opportunities than ever before.. more choices.. and yes, more challenges. But they all add up to more ways to define a utopia of one.

That to me is the finest utopian dream of all... a dream that elevated the common man to uncommon levels of personal dignity.

That to me is free enterprise.

Thank you.