Kiechel's history of corporate strategy

Abstract

Purpose

In this paper aims to interview Walter Kiechel III about his book, The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World, and the lessons it offers for today's managers.

Design/methodology/approach

In this interview, Strategy & Leadership asked Walter Kiechel III about his book, The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World (Harvard Business Press. 2010), and the lessons it offered for today's managers. First as a Fortune writer, then as its editor and finally as editorial director of Harvard Business Publishing, Kiechel has interviewed originators of the core ideas behind strategy and, to a lesser extent, strategic management and executives at the large companies where it was first practiced.

Findings

Kiechel chronicles the rise and stumbles of a number of leading consultancies – primarily Boston Consulting Group, Bain and McKinsey – as they, Professor Michael Porter and a few others “invent” the concept of strategy over the course of about six decades.

Practical implications

Kiechel highlights the lasting accomplishments of the pioneering consultants he calls the Lords of Strategy and the tools they developed like the experience curve and the BCG matrix. He concludes that Greater Taylorism, the application of analytics to virtually every aspect of what a company does, is as important a product of the strategy revolution as strategy itself.

Originality/value

Senior managers will find his combination intellectual and business history engrossing and they should learn many lessons from it. For example: the development of strategic thinking has caused a genuine revolution in the way business is done; strategy is now the dominant framework by which companies understand what they are doing and want to do; and the intellectual models of innovative consulting firms have played a key role in figuring out competitive advantage.

Citation

Allio, R.J. and Randall, R.M. (2010), "Kiechel's history of corporate strategy", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp. 29-34. https://doi.org/10.1108/10878571011042087