The Cocktail Napkin As Magna Carta.(Southwest Airlines company history)(Brief Article)

In a recent profile of Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher, CE noted that Texas businessman Rollin King and Kelleher drew up the business plan for the fledgling airline on "a cocktail napkin in a local bar." This morsel of anecdotal color indicates that the birth of Southwest Airlines was a bit unexpected, that in many ways it grew out of an informal conversation. But it also serves as an inspiration to entrepreneurs everywhere, by demonstrating that the course of a corporate empire can be mapped out without the assistance of lawyers, investment bankers, and even secretaries -…