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Harvard & INSEAD faculty top Thinkers50 ranking
0Who is the most influential living management thinker? The Thinkers50 2013 provides the answer. Described as the Oscars of Management Thinking, the global ranking is published every two years and is the essential guide to which thinkers and which ideas matter now – and which have been consigned to business history. We profile the Top 5 thinkers on the list in 2013
No. 1. The Disruptive Thinker
According to the all-new Thinkers50 ranking, the most influential living management thinker in the world is Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School. Christensen, the originator of the theory of disruptive innovation and author of best-selling books including The Innovator’s Dilemma, tops the list for the second time running – an achievement matched only by management legends Peter Drucker and CK Prahalad.
Christensen’s influence on the business world has been profound. In The Innovator’s Dilemma, he looked at why companies struggle with radical innovation in their markets. The book introduced the idea of disruptive innovation to a generation of managers and explained why the management practices that have allowed them to become industry leaders also make it hard for companies to develop the disruptive technologies that ultimately steal away their markets.
More recently, Christensen has applied his ideas to healthcare and education to show how enlightened management thinking can tackle the big issues facing society. His latest book How Will You Measure Your Life goes one step further to ask how we can create meaning in our personal lives.
No. 2. Blue Ocean Thinkers
The INSEAD professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne secure the No.2 spot in the 2013 Thinkers50 ranking. Kim and Mauborgne, Korean and American, respectively, are the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy and a string of highly influential HBR articles. Blue Ocean Strategy has already sold over two million copies, and has been embraced by companies, not-for-profits and national governments around the world.
Advocates include the Government of Malaysia, which recently launched the National Blue Ocean Strategy 3 (NBOS3), the third wave of its National Blue Ocean Strategy. A key target is building rural infrastructure – providing housing and water supplies for the rural poor.
No. 3. How Strategy Really Works
At No.3, with his highest appearance in the ranking to date, is the Canadian-born thinker Roger Martin. Martin, the former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and author (with Procter & Gamble’s A.G. Lafley) of Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, which wins the Thinkers50 Best Book Award.
No. 4. Wiki-thinker
In the top five for the first time, too, is fellow Canadian guru Don Tapscott. Tapscott, who also received the Thinkers50 Award for Global Solutions, is probably best known for his 2006 book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything co-authored with Anthony Williams. His latest research explores how a new breed of global network enabled by the internet and other technologies, offers an alternative to traditional approaches such as the United Nations or national governments as a way of addressing global problems.
No. 5. Innovation in Reverse
Completing the top five is Indian-born thinker Vijay Govindarajan (known as VG). The Earl C. Daum 1924 professor of international business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, he is one of the world’s leading experts on strategy and innovation and, with co-author Chris Trimble, coined the phrase “Reverse Innovation” to describe products and services designed for emerging markets and then imported into western economies.