Boston Consulting Group: punching managers between the eyes since 1963!

I found a fascinating document on the Boston Consulting Group website today that details the foundation and growth of the company. The 50 page PDF gives a year by year documentation of how Bruce Henderson, a former Bible salesman, grew BCG from a firm with just two consultants to an organization with 3,300 consultants and offices all over the world.



Henderson started off by mailing out controversial essays designed to provoke senior management thinking on a broad spectrum of business issues. They called these 'Perspectives'. When writing these texts, they eschewed anything that was considered conventional business wisdom and instead sought significant and thought-stimulating ideas. Henderson liked to describe the Perspectives as a Punch between the Eyes.

Here's the timeline itself:
http://www.bcg.com/this_is_bcg/bcg_history/Printable.pdf

And here's just one of the Perspectives, 'Capitalizing on Anomalies', that particularly appealed to me:
http://www.bcg.com/publications/files/Eng368-CapitalizingonAno.pdf