Marvin Bower was born on August 1, 1903 in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended Brown University where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1925. His father advised him to study law, and Bower graduated from Harvard Law School in 1928. After having been turned down for a position as an associate at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Cleveland, he attended Harvard Business School and graduated in 1930.

After having earned his MBA, Bower was hired by Jones, Day. His experience there proved formative for his future career in two ways:

• Serving as a secretary for bondholder committees for troubled companies, he noticed that there was little interest in the management practices that caused problems;
• The professional values demonstrated by his colleagues at the law firm instilled in him strong convictions about what it meant to practice a profession.

In 1933, Bower was hired by James O. McKinsey into the new firm of McKinsey & Company. Following McKinsey's death in 1937, Bower assumed leadership of the New York office. He was named managing director in 1950 and stayed in this position until his retirement in 1967. He retained close ties and remained a leadership figure at McKinsey until 1993. Bower died in Florida on January 22, 2003, 99 years old.

Bower is widely credited for leading the formation of the global management consulting industry. His principled insistence on impeccable professional standards in substance, ethics, and style; his dedication to the professional development of his colleagues; and his candor, all served as a role model for several generations of management consultants, both within and outside McKinsey. He protested being named one by BusinessWeek as one of the top businesspeople of the 20th century on the grounds that he was a professional, not a businessman.