You can round it down to Milton Friedman as the ideology and Jack Welch at GE in the 80s as the implementation and figurehead, but the original seeds were in the SEC mandating quarterly reporting as part of regulation after the great depression.

We can all agree to blame Jack Welch as shorthand though, I think.

It's not real. Companies routinely lose money for years in pursuit of long term growth. But for some reason people love to use this as an explanation of everything wrong in our country.

Minority shareholder rights, you can be sued for not maximizing profits see Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. (1919).

1910s Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.