Tedlow, Richard S. 1947(?)–

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TEDLOW, Richard S. 1947(?)–

PERSONAL: Born c. 1947. Education: Yale, B.A., 1969; Columbia M.A., 1971, Ph.D., 1976 (history).

ADDRESSES: Office—Harvard Business School, Entrepreneurial Management Unit, Cambridge, MA 02163. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Business instructor, writer, and consultant. Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA, professor, 1979–, currently Class of 1949 Professor of Business Administration.

AWARDS, HONORS: Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built selected as one of the top ten business books of 2001 by Business Week.

WRITINGS:

Keeping the Corporate Image: Public Relations and Business, 1900–1950, J.A.I. Press (Greenwich, CT), 1979.

(With A. D. Chandler, Jr.) The Coming of Managerial Capitalism: A Casebook on the History of American Economic Institutions (with teaching guide), Irwin (Homewood, IL), 1985.

(With R. John, Jr.) Managing Big Business: Essays from the Business History Review, Harvard Business School Press (Cambridge, MA), 1986.

New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1990, second edition, Harvard Business School Press (Cambridge, MA), 1996.

The Rise of the American Business Corporation, Harwood Academic Press (Chur, Switzerland), 1991.

(Editor, with G. Jones, and contributor) The Rise and Fall of Mass Marketing, Routledge (London, England), 1993.

(Editor, with A. D. Chandler, Jr. and T. K. McCraw) Management Past and Present: A Casebook on American Business History, Southwestern Publishing Company (Cincinnati, OH), 1996.

Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built, HarperBusiness (New York, NY), 2001.

The Watson Dynasty: The Fiery Reign and Troubled Legacy of IBM's Founding Father and Son, HarperBusiness (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to encyclopedias and dictionaries, including Dictionary of American Biography, The Reader's Encyclopedia of American History, The Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century, Oxford Encyclopedia of American History, Oxford Companion to United States History, and Encyclopedia of American Economic History, and to books, including Trade Associations in Business History, edited by Hiroaki Yamazaki and Matao Miyamoto, University of Tokyo Press, 1988; Fundamentals of Pure and Applied Economics, Harwood, 1991; and The Global Market: Developing a Strategy to Manage across Borders, edited by John A. Quelch and Rohit Deshpandé, Jossey-Bass, 2004. Contributor to periodicals, including American Quarterly, Business History Review, Business and Economic History, Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte, World Link, New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Journal of Macromarketing.

Tedlow's works have been translated into French and Japanese.

WORK IN PROGRESS: The American: The Life and Times of Andy Grove.

SIDELIGHTS: Richard S. Tedlow is a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of numerous books dealing with aspects of business from entrepreneurial history to managerial style and mass marketing. In 1985's The Coming of Managerial Capitalism: A Casebook on the History of American Economic Institutions Tedlow and collaborator A. D. Chandler, Jr., examine the transformation of managerial capitalism by such firms as Standard Oil and Du Pont, as well as by more modern diversified corporations such as General Electric.

In New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America Tedlow draws his examples from the rivalries between Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola, and General Motors and Ford. Brand names and their marketing is at the heart of this "exhaustive, lively casebook," as Publishers Weekly critic Genevieve Stuttaford described it. Reviewing the same title in Business History Review, Daniel Pope concluded that "those who read and contemplate the story Tedlow presents so well will gain a broader and deeper understanding of American business and society." Likewise, T. A. B. Corley, writing in Business History, praised the manner in which Tedlow "has made a skillful use of the plentiful archives, and thereby has given an example for other scholars to follow." With The Rise of the American Business Corporation Tedlow provides a short course on the subject to "introduce this material to non-specialists lacking the time to read more substantial accounts," according to Christopher Scmitz in Business History. Tony Freyer, writing in the Business History Review, described the book as an exploration of "the growth of the business corporation as an organization entity within the course of American history, from its colonial beginnings to the present." Freyer further commented that, "using case studies and anecdotes, [Tedlow] portrays well the causes and consequences of … the managerial revolution."

Tedlow serves up seven stories of business titans in his Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built. These men include Andrew Carnegie of Carnegie Steel, George Eastman of Eastman Kodak, Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company, Thomas J. Watson, Sr. of Internatioal Business Machines (IBM), Charles Revson of Revlon, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, and Robert Noyce of Intel. In his book, Tedlow "narrates the often-twisted roads to riches of some of America's greatest entrepreneurs" as Jill Lerner noted in the Boston Business Journal. The author presents mini-biographies that hone in on the style and tactics of men whose careers span a century-and-a-half of American history. According to Lerner, "In Tedlow's unvarnished accounts of the seven entrepreneurs, it becomes clear these men were indeed giants, though not gods." It also becomes clear that each had a succinct message which they were able to put across efficiently, as in Noyce's "Intel Inside" or Walton's "Always the low price. Always."

Further praise for Tedlow's Giants of Enterprise came from a Business Week reviewer, who called the book an "engrossing gallery of executive portraits," and added that Tedlow "performs a great service by bringing their stories together in one volume." The same critic went on to note that Tedlow "deftly explores [the executives'] backgrounds and the psychological impulses that drove them" in this book informed by "passionate and fluid writing." Writing in Training, Jane Bozarth felt that Tedlow "has intimate knowledge of his subjects and is able to draw incisive parallels and contrasts among them." Bozarth continued that Tedlow's "talent at getting to the essence of their stories makes this an excellent overview of the history of American enterprise."

Tedlow continues his case-history approach to the study of managerial styles in The Watson Dynasty: The Fiery Reign and Troubled Legacy of IBM's Founding Father and Son. Expanding on the mini-biography of Thomas J. Watson Sr. from Giants of Enterprise, Tedlow devotes an entire volume to Watson, father and son, who helped shaped the destiny and workings of IBM, or "Big Blue" as the corporation is popularly known. Tedlow demonstrates how "shaky" were the beginnings of both father and son, as Library Journal contributor Carol J. Elsen pointed out, and "offers insight into how the complex and often volatile personalities of father and son created the corporate ethos of IBM."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 1, 2001, Eileen Hardy, review of Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built, p. 452.

Boston Business Journal, December 7, 2001, Jill Lerner, review of Giants of Enterprise, p. 21.

Business History, October, 1991, T. A. B. Corley, review of New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America, p. 121; January, 1993, Christopher Scmitz, review of The Rise of the American Business Corporation, p. 97; April, 1994, Sue Bowden, review of The Rise and Fall of Mass Marketing, p. 133.

Business History Review, summer, 1985, review of The Coming of Managerial Capitalism: A Casebook on the History of American Economic Institutions, p. 312; winter, 1990, Daniel Pope, review of New and Improved, p. 780; spring, 1993, Tony Freyer, review of The Rise of the American Business Corporation, p. 153;

Business Week, December 10, 2001, p. 21; December 17, 2001, "Remembering the Titans," p. 18.

Computerworld, December 10, 2001, Kathleen Melymuka, "Learning Some Lessons from Titans of Industry," p. 44.

Library Journal, September 1, 2001, Steven J. Mayover, review of Giants of Enterprise, p. 200; November 1, 2003, Carol J. Elsen, review of The Watson Dynasty: The Fiery Reign and Troubled Legacy of IBM's Founding Father and Son, p. 95.

Publishers Weekly, February 23, 1990, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of New and Improved, p. 210;

Training, April, 2002, Jane Bozarth, review of Giants of Enterprise, p. 56.