The Thought Leader Interview: Stephen A. Schwarzman

The Blackstone Group CEO discusses what it takes to think big — in business, deals, and philanthropy.

- DANIEL GROSS

One of the most successful startups of the past several decades doesn’t hail from Silicon Valley or Bangalore. It got started in Midtown Manhattan. And rather than being engaged in high tech, it operates in one of the oldest industries: finance. From its 1985 origins as a two-person firm founded by refugees from Lehman Brothers, Steve Schwarzman, and Pete Peterson, the Blackstone Group has grown into one of the world’s largest asset managers, with more than 2,700 employees and US$571 billion under management in funds that invest in real estate, infrastructure, life sciences, and a host of other asset classes. In an era when many-storied Wall Street firms have disappeared, merged, or shrunk, Blackstone has been noteworthy for its financial success and growth mindset.

In his new book, What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman tracks his journey as a young man in a hurry, first from suburban Philadelphia to Yale, then to Harvard Business School, and on to Wall Street. That personal story is layered with descriptions of a unique management philosophy and conscious effort to build a culture that encourages growth, large ambitions, and collective decision making. One of Schwarzman’s mottoes is that it is just as easy to do something big as it is to do something small — a mentality he has applied to philanthropy as well as business. In recent years, he has founded the Schwarzman Scholars program, a kind of Rhodes scholarship for those wishing to study in China, and made game-changing donations in AI research to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oxford. Schwarzman sat down with strategy+business in the room where Blackstone’s management committee meets in Midtown Manhattan.