Walter A. Friedman

Walter A. Friedman is Director of the Business History Initiative and Lecturer.  He edits Business History Review with Geoff Jones. He specializes in business, labor, and economic history. He is author of Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters (2013) and Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America (2004). He is currently writing a history of large American companies from 1920 to 1980.  He was formerly a Newcomen Post-Doctoral Fellow in Business History and a Trustee of the Business History Conference.

Featured Work

Fortune Tellers

The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters

The period leading up to the Great Depression witnessed the rise of economic forecasters, pioneers who sought to use the tools of science to predict the future, with the aim of profiting from their forecasts. This book chronicles the lives and careers of the men who defined this first wave of economic fortune tellers, men such as Roger Babson, Irving Fisher, John Moody, C. J. Bullock, and Warren Persons. They competed to sell their distinctive methods of prediction to investors and businesses, and thrived in the boom years that followed World War I. Yet, almost to a man, they failed to predict the devastating crash of 1929. Despite their failures, this first generation of economic forecasters helped to make the prediction of economic trends a central economic activity, and shed light on the mechanics of financial markets by providing a range of statistics and information about individual firms. They also raised questions that are still relevant today. What is science and what is merely guesswork in forecasting? What motivates people to buy forecasts? Does the act of forecasting set in motion unforeseen events that can counteract the forecast made?

Birth of a Salesman

The Transformation of Selling in America

This book chronicles the remarkable metamorphosis of the American salesman from itinerant amateur to trained expert. From the mid-nineteenth century to the eve of World War II, the development of sales management transformed an economy populated by peddlers and canvassers to one driven by professional salesmen and executives. From book agents flogging Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs to John H. Patterson’s famous pyramid strategy at National Cash Register to the determined efforts by Ford and Chevrolet to craft surefire sales pitches for their dealers, selling evolved from an art to a science. "Salesmanship" as a term and a concept arose around the turn of the century, paralleling the new science of mass production. Managers assembled professional forces of neat responsible salesmen who were presented as hardworking pillars of society, no longer the butt of endless "traveling salesmen" jokes. People became prospects; their homes became territories. As an NCR representative said, the modern salesman "let the light of reason into dark places." The study of selling itself became an industry, producing academic disciplines devoted to marketing, consumer behavior, and industrial psychology. At Carnegie Mellon’s Bureau of Salesmanship Research, Walter Dill Scott studied the characteristics of successful salesmen and ways to motivate consumers to buy.

Books

• Friedman, Walter. American Business History: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. View Details
• Friedman, Walter A. and Geoffrey Jones, eds. Business History. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014. View Details
• Friedman, Walter A. Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters. Princeton University Press, 2013. View Details
• Jones, Geoffrey, and Walter A. Friedman, eds. The Rise of the Modern Firm. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012. View Details
• Friedman, Walter A. Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. View Details

Journal Articles

• Friedman, Walter. "The Harvard Economic Service and the Problems of Forecasting." History of Political Economy 41, no. 1 (2009). View Details
• Friedman, Walter A. "Give Me That Old-Time Motivation." Harvard Business Review 84, nos. 7/8 (July–August 2006). View Details
• Tedlow, Richard S., and Walter Friedman. "Statistical Portraits of American Business Elites: A Review Essay." Business History 45, no. 4 (October 2003): 89–113. View Details
• Friedman, Walter. "Paths of Learning: Life and Death in the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries." Harvard Magazine (July–August 2002). View Details

Book Chapters

• Friedman, Walter A. "Leadership and History." Chap. 11 in Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice, edited by Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana. Harvard Business Press, 2010. View Details

Working Papers

• Friedman, Walter A. "Wesley Mitchell's Business Cycles after 100 Years." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-114, March 2016. (Please contact the author to request copy of this paper.) View Details
• Friedman, Walter A. "Junior Achievement: Training Teenagers for Business Careers after World War II." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-113, March 2016. (Please contact the author to request copy of this paper.) View Details
• Friedman, Walter A. "The Seer of Wellesley Hills: Roger Babson and the Babson Statistical Organization." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 08-036, November 2007. View Details
• Friedman, Walter A. "Irving Fisher, Economic Forecasting, and the Myth of the Business Cycle." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 08-037, November 2007. View Details
• Friedman, Walter A. "The Rise of Business Forecasting Agencies in the United States." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 07-045, January 2007. View Details
• Friedman, Walter A. "Warren Persons, the Harvard Economic Service, and the Problems of Forecasting." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 07-044, January 2007. View Details
• Friedman, Walter. "The Tactics of Traveling Salesmen: Using Geniality to Master the Marketplace." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 99-016, August 1998. View Details
• Friedman, Walter. "The Efficient Pyramid: John H. Patterson and the Sales and Competition Strategy of the National Cash Register Company, 1884-1922." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 99-015, August 1998. View Details
• Friedman, Walter, and Richard S. Tedlow. "The Visible Man: An Historiographical Investigation of Quantitative Studies of American Business Leadership." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 98-101, May 1998. View Details

Cases and Teaching Materials

• Friedman, Walter A. "Forecasting the Great Depression." Harvard Business School Case 708-046, January 2008. (Revised July 2009.) View Details

Research Summary

Business History

Walter Friedman serves as co-editor of Business History Review. He has a special interest in the history of marketing and personal selling, and is author of Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America (Harvard, 2004). He is also interested in the history of economic thought and his most recent project is to trace the development of economic forecasting theories from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. He has recently published in the journal Business History (UK) and in Harvard Magazine.

Additional Information

• Business History at HBS

Areas of Interest

• business history
• economics
• entrepreneurship
• marketing
• sales force management
Additional Topics
• business marketing
• consumer behavior
• consumer goods
• consumer psychology
• creativity
• customer behavior
• customer satisfaction
• ethnic marketing
• gender
• general management
• government and business
• high-tech marketing
• international marketing
• large-scale enterprise
• managerial incentives
• technological innovation
Industries
• advertising
• automobiles
• automotive
• electrical equipment
• electronics
• information technology industry
• marketing industry
• railroad
• retailing
• soft drink
Geographies
• Central Europe
• Europe
• North America
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Western Europe