Henderson was not a touchy-feely leader. Colleagues described him as intense, sometimes prickly, and intellectually fearless. What set him apart was his conviction that business competition followed predictable, mathematical laws—and that once you understood them, you could win without simply outspending your rivals.
Out of this belief came BCG’s first bombshell: the . Henderson observed that real unit costs declined by a predictable percentage (typically 20–30%) every time cumulative production doubled. The implication was radical: market share wasn’t just a vanity metric. It was a weapon. The company with the highest cumulative experience could underprice everyone and still make money. founder of bcg
Henderson led BCG until 1980, staying on as chairman until 1985. He died in 1992, but his DNA remains in every BCG slide deck: simple, elegant matrices, a reverence for data, and the quiet confidence that business is a game of logic, not luck. Henderson was not a touchy-feely leader
He also broke the mold of industry-focused consulting. Where other firms sold deep sector knowledge, BCG sold frameworks. Henderson believed that a brilliant strategist could walk into any industry—steel, software, or soap—and find the winning move using the same mental models. That bet made BCG a powerhouse and launched the entire strategy consulting industry as we know it. Out of this belief came BCG’s first bombshell: the