Ratan Tata among top 50 global thinkers of 2009

117075 Investors following Infosys. Share this News with them.

0

Like this story, share it with millions of investors on M3

Ratan Tata among top 50 global thinkers of 2009

Forbes India exclusively brings you The Thinkers 50, a ranking of global management thought leaders.

Post your opinion here

 

0

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Prahalad's ascendance to the top of the list signals the growing influence of Indian management thinkers, a trend that first showed up in the 2007 ranking when four Indians - Prahalad, CEO coach Ram Charan, Tuck School of Business' Vijay Govindarajan and Harvard Business School's Rakesh Khurana - made it to the top 50.

This year, Indians have more to cheer about with a total of six Indians on the list. Apart from the original four, the two notable additions this year are senior leaders from India Inc.: Ratan Tata, CEO of Tata Industries, who makes his debut at No. 12, and Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, who comes in at No. 15. From the original lot, Ram Charan has moved up several slots from No. 22 to No. 13 while Govindarajan came down to No. 24 from 23 last year and upcoming leadership expert Rakesh Khurana moved up one slot to No 44.

The Indian brigade is making waves globally. For two years, Govindarajan handled the role of Chief Innovation Consultant at GE, a prestigious assignment for an academic. Says Govindarajan, "The GE assignment will shape my research agenda going forward. I want to push the thinking on the concept of reverse innovation - developing products in countries like China and India and marketing them globally." His next book on reverse innovation will be out in 2010.

Khurana, on the other hand, after having explored the disastrous consequences of hiring "superstar CEOs" (the research that catapulted him to superstardom himself), is now focussing on the reform of MBA education, an area that is dominated by stalwarts like McGill University's Henry Mintzberg and Stanford's Jeffrey Pfeffer. His latest book, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, explores the lacuna in management education. "My second area of focus is in the area of large institutional change, with a focus on leadership, globalisation, and addressing society's most pressing global problems through the construction and reform of a new type of institutional leadership," says Khurana.

Another Indian - London Business School's Nirmalya Kumar - features in the list of 'Thinkers shaping the future', a bunch of people who aren't on the ranking yet but have great potential going forward.

Apart from the growing influence of Indian thought leaders, this year's Thinkers 50 shows some other interesting trends. This year's ranking has 14 notable new entrants like Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus (an impressive No. 6), Google's Eric Schmidt, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, Rotman School of Management's Roger Martin, Wired's Chris Anderson, Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, economic historian Niall Ferguson and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

The economic turbulence has had a bearing on the ranking, bringing to the forefront people such as Krugman and Stiglitz whose ideas now have even more takers. Also, as the ranking points out, "caring capitalists are the new heroes", be it Prahalad's idea of the Bottom of the Pyramid, Bill Gates' concept of creative capitalism which borrows from Prahalad's ideas to some extent, or Muhammad Yunus and the micro-credit revolution in Bangladesh which has spawned several new innovations.

Interestingly, 26 percent of the top 50 have entered the ranking for the first time. While people like Tom Peters, Jim Collins, Henry Mintzberg, Warren Bennis, Charles Handy and John Kotter still figure in the ranking, the newcomers are a welcome change. The world of management research could do with a fresh infusion of new ideas.