Theodore Levitt (March 1, 1925, Vollmerz, Main-Kinzig-Kreis, Germany – June 28, 2006, Belmont, Massachusetts) was an American economist and professor at Harvard Business School. He was also editor of the Harvard Business Review and an editor who was especially noted for increasing the Review's circulation and for popularizing the term globalization. In 1983, he proposed a definition for corporate purpose: Rather than merely making MONEY, it is to create and keep a customer.

Levitt was born in 1925 in Vollmerz. A decade later his family moved to Dayton, Ohio. He served in World War II, received his high school diploma through correspondence school and then earned a bachelor's at Antioch College and a Ph.D. in economics at Ohio State University. His first teaching job was at the University of North Dakota.

Guy Kawasaki (born August 30, 1954 in Honolulu, Hawaii) is a Silicon Valley marketing executive. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. He popularized the term "evangelist" in marketing the Macintosh, and the concepts of evangelism marketing and technology evangelism.

Guy Kawasaki was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he attended Iolani School. He cites his AP English teacher Harold Keables as a major influence, who taught him that "the key to writing is editing." He graduated with B.A. in psychology from Stanford University in 1976. After Stanford he went to law school at UC Davis, for two weeks before realizing that he hated law school. In 1977, he enrolled in the UCLA Anderson School of Management, from where he received his MBA. His first job was at a jewelry company, Nova Stylings; in regard to this, Kawasaki said, "The jewelry BUSINESS is a very, very tough business—tougher than the computer business... I learned a very valuable lesson: how to sell."

David Mackenzie Ogilvy (23 June 1911 – 21 July 1999), CBE, was an advertising executive who was widely hailed as "The Father of Advertising". In 1962, Time called him "the most sought-after wizard in today's advertising industry".

David Mackenzie Ogilvy was born on 23 June 1911 at West Horsley, Surrey in England. His mother, Dorothy Blow Fairfield, was Anglo-Irish. His father, Francis John Longley Ogilvy (c. 1867 - 1943) was a Gaelic-speaking Highlander from Scotland who was a classics scholar and a financial BROKER. Ogilvy attended St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, on reduced fees because of his father's straitened circumstances and won a scholarship at age thirteen to Fettes College, in Edinburgh. In 1929, he again won a scholarship, this time in History to Christ Church, Oxford.

Wroe Alderson (1898 – 1965), an active Quaker, is widely recognized as the most important marketing theorist of the twentieth century and the "father of modern marketing".

Alderson’s academic training was at George Washington, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania. He served as president of the American Marketing Association and was highly active in The Institute of Management Sciences. He began his BUSINESS career at the U.S. department of Commerce, founded the internationally prominent marketing consulting firm of Alderson Associates, and served as a professor at Wharton University of Pennsylvania after joining it in 1959. While always deeply involved in the advancement of marketing science he also believed that theory and practice go hand in hand. This also suited his scientific method. From a methodological perspective, he emphasized inductive theorizing from market place events, providing a balanced to the neo-classical theories of firm behaviour. He also had the ability to communicate in the language of many disciplines and to bridge the BUSINESS and academic communities.

Thomas J. "Tom" Peters (born November 7, 1942 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American writer on BUSINESS management practices, best known for In Search of Excellence (co-authored with Robert H. Waterman, Jr).

Peters was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He went to Severn School for High School and attended Cornell University, receiving a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1965, and a master's degree in 1966. He later studied BUSINESS at Stanford Business School, receiving an M.B.A. and PhD. In 2004, he also received an honorary doctorate from the State University of Management in Moscow.