 While many similarly-titled books by other authors exist, T. Boone Pickens argues that Koch's immense personal business success lends credibility to the book's concept.Koch has said that he initially wrote the book after the 2004 acquisition of Invista with the intent of using it as a sort of training manual to give a comprehensive picture of Koch Industries' business philosophy and to explain the principles of MBM to the new employees; Koch had initially conducted much of the training of new employees, but as the company grew, it soon became an impossible task, and necessitated the implementation of some other training method.He was later convinced to expand the "training manual" to share his philosophies with a wider audience.