Mck..readMarvin Bower (born August 1, 1903 in Cincinnati, Ohio - died January 22, 2003 in Delray Beach, Florida). The son of the deputy recorder at Cuyahoga County, he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and attended public schools there. He earned his bachelor's degree from Brown University in 1925. His father advised him to study law, and Bower graduated from Harvard Law School in 1928. Bower then attended Harvard Business School, graduating in 1930. Following completion of his studies, Bower worked as an associate at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Cleveland.In 1933, Bower was hired by James O. McKinsey into the new Chicago firm of James O. McKinsey & Company. He managed a newly-acquired branch in New York. Following McKinsey's death in 1937, the two offices split up and Bower resurrected the New York firm, with the assistance of New York partners, as McKinsey & Company in 1939. He served as managing director from 1950 to 1967, and remained a leadership figure at McKinsey as director and partner until 1992.According to the Harvard Business School[1], Bower "is considered the father of modern management consulting." His principled insistence on impeccable professional standards in substance, ethics, and style; his dedication to the professional development of his colleagues; and his candor, all served as a role model for several generations of management consultants, both within and outside McKinsey.He published several books and articles, among them:The Will to Lead: Running a Business With a Network of Leaders, ISBN 0-87584-758-7 The Will to Manage: Corporate Success Through Programmed Management, ISBN 0-07-006735-X Perspective on McKinsey - internal McKinsey publication BCG read....Bruce D. Henderson (1915-1992) was the founder of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Henderson founded BCG in 1963 in Boston, Massachusetts.Originally called the Management and Consulting Division of the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company, what became BCG was itself a subsidiary of The Boston Company. A former Bible salesman for Southwest Publishing (which his father owned for 50 years), Henderson attended the University of Virginia and then earned an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University before attending Harvard Business School. He left HBS ninety days before graduation to work for Westinghouse Corporation, where he became one of the youngest vice presidents in the company's history. He was named one of Time Magazine's top 10 news makers under 30 years old.He left Westinghouse to head Arthur D. Little's management services unit before he accepted the challenge from the CEO of the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company to start a consulting arm for the bank. The billings for the first month of BCG were only US$ 500. Nevertheless, Henderson hired his second consultant, Arthur P. Contas in December 1963.The Economist magazine stated that Henderson did more to change the way business is done in the United States than any other man in American business history. Well known to many now is the famous Growth Share Matrix ('cash cow') and the 'Experience curve'. His books were published in 27 languages.Henderson retired to Nashville, and taught at The Owen School of Management at Vanderbilt University. He was also honored by Vanderbilt's School of Engineering by being named to their rarely bestowed 'Distinguished Engineering Alumni'.Today BCG is among the largest and most profitable management consulting companies in the world. It has 63 offices in 37 countries and in 2005 had a revenue of US$ 1.5 billion.Booz read....Edwin G. Booz founded the management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.Born in 1887, in Reading, Pennsylvania, to a family of modest means and one of seven sons, Booz worked his way through prep school, college, and graduate school at many and varied kinds of work--tutor, bookkeeper, draftsman, and 'business investigator.' When Booz left the Kellogg School at Northwestern University in 1914 with a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in psychology, a brother of one of the Nations most prestigious Fraternities, Alpha Delta Phi, he went into business for himself to perform studies and analyses of businesses.He conducted studies and business investigations for clients as varied as the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio; the Canadian Pacific Railroad; Chicago's Union Stock Yards and Transit Company; and the Photographers Association of the United States.World War I caused a temporary hiatus in his career as an entrepreneur, but not in his work as an analyst and solver of business problems. Drafted into the Army as a private to do personnel work in September 1917, he soon rose to the rank of major and worked with the War Department in Washington, D.C., to reorganize and perfect the business methods of its various bureaus. He left the Army in March 1919, ready to turn his business acumen to the service of bankers, manufacturers, advertising agencies, wholesalers, sales managers, publishers, real estate operators, public service cooperations, and other enterprises. Booz focused on identifying, diagnosing, and recommending solutions to business problems. His client base grew; he expanded his services to include executive recruitment; and he broadened the partnership base of the company so that in 1936, it became Booz, Fry, Allen, & Hamilton, and subsequently, Booz Allen Hamilton.Between the two World Wars, Booz continued to pursue his vision of dedicated service to businesses. In 1940, he responded to a request from the Secretary of the Navy to help the Navy prepare for war, thus beginning what turned out to be Booz Allen's long-term and continuing service to the federal government.Booz retired partially from the firm in 1946 and died in October 1951. At that time, the company newsletter published a tribute paid to Ed Booz by one of the staff at an annual conference in 1947:"I admire his deep sincerity, his high ideals, his uniformity of analysis, his ability to give and to take, his courage, his capacity for absorbing new tools, his burning desire to build soundly, his deep rooted conviction regarding the value of organization, his philosophical grasp of the implication of growth and perpetuation."Anonymous
