Kyle Harrison
to-read
The Lords of Strategy
The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World
- Author
- Walter Kiechel III
- Published
- 2010
- Recommended
- Once
Bruce Henderson at BCG, Bill Bain, Fred Gluck at McKinsey and Michael Porter at Harvard — the four men Kiechel credits with inventing corporate strategy as a discipline, and the consulting industry that sold it.
Why it’s on the list: Named in the “explains an entire industry” thread. Explains consulting and corporate strategy at once, since the book’s claim is that the industry invented the thing it sells.
Where I saw it: In Kyle’s “Books To Read” Apple Note, recovered from the reply thread to @WillManidis asking “what is the single best book you can read that will explain an entire industry?” (June 2, 2025). The full recovered list lives on what is the single best book… (tweet).
Page count omitted — no reliable catalog figure was found.
Connections
- what is the single best book… (tweet) — the thread this came out of; the full recovered list lives there.
- Strategy · Consulting — the two industries this covers.