The biggest gurus of Management

With the passing away of Peter Drucker, a new top thinker takes centrestage and he is Michael Porter ! The Monitor consultant and HBS prof of strategy has been voted as the top business thinker of the world.

The real surprise of the list however is Bill Gates, who has leapt 18 places of the last ranking two years ago to number 2! CK Prahalad makes the Indian community proud as he leap frogs on the back of his bottom of the pyramid theory to land at number three, displacing Tom Peters (considered by many to be Drucker's antithesis and yet his natural successor) to number 4. The great thing is that another Indian born guru, Ram Charan who wasn't even ranked the last time comes in at the mid point of 24. Another Indian born strategist Vijay Govindarajan is in the list at number 30. Rakesh Khurana also comes in to the list at number 33 (he has a blog too).

Henry Mintzberg's book Managers not MBAs makes him come at number 8. But he's not just about that. The kind of thinking he's done in strategic management and organizational structures is pathbreaking, hence to label him as "Promotes Managers not MBAs" only is very misleading !

I however was disappointed to see someone like organizational cultures is terribly important for today's organizations, specially the innovative ones.

Naomi Klien however seems an anachronism in the list of people who largely further commercial interests, but is a testimony to the fact that many in the business community are listening to her views.
Scott Adams beats the likes of Gary Hamel (number 14), to come in at number 12 !

The reason for the fluctuations so much is that many biz gurus haven't come up with new ideas and have stagnated or fallen in the rankings, case in point: Hamel's last book was released in 2000.