Brian Bedol is a "maverick entrepreneur in an increasingly mature industry dominated by conglomerates."

He could summon up that astonishing leap of insight usually the purview of programming geniuses and maverick entrepreneurs.

Edison officials, including Christopher Whittle, the maverick entrepreneur who founded the company eight years ago, hailed the results as exceeding their expectations and providing solid evidence that public schools could be invigorated with intervention from the outside.

In one corner is a maverick French entrepreneur named Francois Pinault, who has amassed a sprawling conglomerate of companies include the American luggage manufacturer Samsonite.

Critics warn that this trend could lead to a loss of innovation in an industry built by maverick entrepreneurs.

William G. McGowan, a maverick entrepreneur who changed the shape of the nation's telephone industry, bringing lower cost long-distance service to millions of American households and businesses, died yesterday in Washington.

He gives portraits of politicians, a hugely popular cartoonist, maverick entrepreneurs who have broken out of Japan's rigidly company-dominated culture to start their own ventures, and dispirited students who suddenly stop attending school.

Edison has been at the center of the debate over school choice and privatization since the maverick entrepreneur Chris Whittle founded it in the early 1990's.

Though born in Canada, Mr. Ebbers is a quintessentially American maverick entrepreneur who thrived by upsetting the establishment.

Pirie tried to capitalize on the Rothschild name by soliciting maverick British entrepreneurs who were hungering to take over undervalued companies in the United States.