Shaw broke off his studies at the Olivet College before graduating in 1899, at the age of 23, and founded, with Louis C. Walker, the Shaw-Walker Company in Muskegon Michigan,[2] specializing in office supplies and plugs and files.

Shaw took a sabbatical in 1910, when his business was flourishing, to study the economy at Harvard University in Cambridge, where he especially appreciated the courses by Frank William Taussig, which demonstrated its influence later on in his writings.

He also befriended the Professor of economic history Edwin Francis Gay, first dean of Harvard Business School.

Shaw argued in his books and System journal, that the federal government should be involved in the collection and data processing for business.

In 1917, when the United States were about to enter war, he persuaded the Council of National Defense to create the Commercial Economy Board, of which he became the secretary.

[2] Jeffrey L. Cruikshan (1987) recalled: Under Shaw's direction, System attempted to take a practical approach to business.

It was a question that Shaw himself had faced in 1906, when he had helped Northwestern University design an undergraduate business curriculum.