What movies portray leaders who think creatively, who keep their heads, who manage communication, and, as for failure, well, that’s just not an option (a line from Apollo 13)?

Every year around Christmas, Susan Schreter takes a refresher course in leadership. Her teacher is always the same: George Bailey, the sweetly earnest hero of It’s A Wonderful Life, who risks his livelihood to prove that compassionate banking need not be an oxymoron.
“Every time I see that movie, I want to be more—like George,” says Schreter, CEO of Coupons4Everything.
com, a Seattle-based startup that offers coupons and rebates for consumer goods over the web. “He reminds me that the important thing is to be respected, not as a rich entrepreneur but as a socially minded, successful member of a community.”
Schreter’s paean to the saint of Bedford Falls came in response to a recent Inc. survey that asked smallcompany CEOs and senior executives to name the movies that inspired business leaders best. The question isn’t a frivolous one: Movies—like Shakespeare—
are becoming a staple of business school curricula, as professors screen Wall Street to teach ethics and leaven Tom Peters with Tom (Jerry Maguire) Cruise.
“Films are a catalyst. They present dramatic problems, crises, and turnarounds,” explains John K. Clemens, who incorporates works like Hoosiers and Citizen Kane into his graduate management and executive education courses at Hartwick College, in Oneonta, New York, and is the coauthor of Movies to Manage by: Lessons in Leadership from Great Films (NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group, 1999).
“Films beg to be interpreted and discussed, and from those discussions businesspeople come up with principles for their own jobs.”