Lords of Strategy

2.

Bruce HendersonDefines the Subject

THE BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP opened its doors for business on July 1, 1963, with “one room, a desk, no telephone, and no secretary,” according to the firm’s official history of its early years. Bruce Henderson, founder of what was then known as the Management Consulting Division of the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company, was its sole employee. If you read his résumé up until then, you wouldn’t have taken Henderson for an entrepreneur. For starters, the forty-eight-year-old had worked his entire life for established companies.

Early Wonderings

Bruce Henderson was born in Nashville on April 30, 1915, the son of a man who published and sold Bibles. Southwestern Publishing, which his father owned, dated back ...