Unlike most nineteenth-century makers of traditional musical instruments, who did not aim at mass markets, German harmonica manufacturers were able to develop a large and worldwide market for their product. Located in regions outside Germany's industrial core districts, they epitomized successful specialty production. From the beginning, they relied on exports, especially to North America, a trade that was initially assisted by transatlantic emigrants who helped test market potential and tap into commercial networks. Hohner, the most successful harmonica manufacturer, created a well-known brand and extensively applied strategies of market segmentation and product differentiation from the 1890s onward, in part to satisfy customers' demand for myriad product variations. Sales channels and marketing methods also were far from homogeneous, being most effective when adapted to local conditions and cultures. For harmonica makers, diversity rather than uniformity was the key to global marketing success.

This is the story of two women with differing visions about business who have largely been forgotten. Miriam Beard, the maverick daughter of Progressive reformers Charles and Mary Beard, wrote the first international cultural history of the businessman in 1938. Henrietta M. Larson was Harvard Business School's first lady, the first female faculty member and the first woman to be tenured there. The two women never met or interacted. Yet their lives and histories were entangled when one woman, Henrietta, wrote a critical review about the contributions of the other. This article uses their untold story to trace the contentious process of professionalization that sidelined one maverick outsider and kept a maven insider on the margins of a fledgling discipline she had helped to create. Its significance is to make gender central to the reintegration of business and culture and of women's roles in the historiography of business.