‘Becoming a Principle-Driven Leader’ Review: Prosperity and Progress

The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2026

by Theodore Kinni




Perhaps being a nepo baby isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Take Chase Koch, whose father, Charles, has long served as chairman of Koch, Inc., a conglomerate that generates more than $125 billion in annual revenue. The younger Mr. Koch, now an executive vice president at the family business, reports that his father made him undergo a capitalist’s education from a young age.

“Every Sunday,” Mr. Koch remembers, “my sister, Elizabeth, and I were required to listen to books on tape from the thinkers, doers, and dreamers” who had shaped their father’s “understanding of the world. . . . What ten-year-old wants to listen to lectures from Friedrich Hayek, Abraham Maslow, Thomas Sowell, and Milton Friedman?”

Readers get a taste of those Sundays in “Becoming a Principle-Driven Leader,” which Mr. Koch co-wrote with his 90-year-old father. The Kochs declare that 41 principles—a mix of legal and economic concepts ranging from property rights to marginal analysis—are responsible for the “nine-thousandfold” growth of the company since 1960 and, less plausibly, for human progress itself... read the rest here.