Strategy as a Detour on the Way to Mars: A Biographical Interview with Richard Rumelt

My introduction to Richard Rumelt was a syllabus for his Strategy seminar emailed to me in December my first year as a Ph.D. student. The first assignment was to read Chandler’s, “Scale and Scope”, and to write a 15- to 20-page paper. The class began the first week of January, but the 780-page book would not be available in bookstores until December 18. (These were the days before Amazon). We all assumed this was a screening mechanism, but instead Rumelt found himself with six hundred pages to read.

Rumor had it that to work with Rumelt (which everyone wanted) you...