4 Indians among world's top 50 business gurus

December 20, 2005 17:07 IST

Last Updated: December 20, 2005 19:22 IST

Four Indians figure amongst the world's top 50 management gurus, according to The Thinkers
50 2005 -- a ranking by the European Foundation for Management Development.

The four Indians on the elite list are University of Michigan professor C K Prahalad (ranked 3rd),
CEO coach Ram Charan (ranked 24th), Tuck Business School professor Vijay Govindarajan
(ranked 30th), and Harvard professor Rakesh Khurana (ranked 33rd).

Michael Porter, who heads Harvard Business School's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness,
has been voted the world's topmost living management guru.

World's Top 50 Management Gurus

1 Michael Porter, Harvard strategy specialist
2 Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft
3 C K Prahalad, LBS strategy specialist
4 Tom Peters, leadership consultant
5 Jack Welch, GE's ex-CEO and celebrity
6 Jim Collins, author of Good to Great
7 Philip Kotler, Kellogg's marketing guru
8 Henry Mintzberg, promotes managers not MBAs
9 Kjell Nordstrom & Jonas Ridderstrale, funky business
exponents
10 Charles Handy, British portfolio worker99
11 Richard Branson, entrepreneur and Virgin flyer
12 Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert
13 Thomas Stewart, Intellectual Capital author
14 Gary Hamel, strategy consultant
15 Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy
duo
16 Kenichi Ohmae, Japanese strategy master
17 Patrick Dixon, futurist and change guru
18 Stephen Covey, author of Knows The 7 Habits of
Highly Effective People
19 Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard's change manager
20 Edward De Bono, Lateral thinker and author
21 Clayton Christensen, Harvard's new-tech guru
22 Robert Kaplan & David Norton, Balanced Scorecard
creators
23 Peter Senge, learning organisation inventor
24 Ram Charan, coach to the CEOs
25 Fons Trompenaars, intercultural management man
26 Russ Ackoff, specialist of systems thinking
27 Warren Bennis, humanist leadership guru
28 Chris Argyris, action and learning guru
29 Michael Dell, Dell Computer's founder
30 Vijay Govindarajan, Tuck's strategy innovator
31 Malcolm Gladwell, Blink and Tipping Point guru
32 Manfred Kets De Vries, Psychoanalytic economist
33 Rakesh Khurana, Harvard labour market guru
34 Lynda Gratton, LBS people and strategy guru
35 Alan Greenspan, head of US Federal Reserve
36 Edgar Schein, MIT organisational psychologist
37 Ricardo Semler, Radical CEO of Semco
38 Don Peppers, Customer relationship man
39 Paul Krugman, economist and columnist
40 Jeff Bezos, Amazon boss
41 Andy Grove, one of the Intel founders
42 Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence inventor
43 Leif Edvinsson, professor of intellectual capital
44 James Champy, Advocate of re-engineering
45 Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones, authentic leaders
46 Naomi Klein, No Logo author
47 Geert Hofstede, cultural expert
48 Larry Bossidy, chair of Honeywell
49 Costas Markides, LBS strategy professor
50 Geoffrey Moore, hi-tech marketing man

Bill Gates, the co-founder of the world's largest software company Microsoft, is considered the
second most influential management guru in the world.

The list names only four women amongst the top 50 business gurus. INSEAD professor Renée
Mauborgne is ranked 15th, followed by Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter at 19th slot,
London Business School's Lynda Gratton at 34th position and the No Logo author Naomi Klein at
46.

Scott Adams, cartoonist and creator of comic strip Dilbert, has been ranked the 12th most
influential management guru.

GE's former chief executive Jack Welch, marketing expert Philip Kotler, Virgin boss Richard
Branson, Dell Computers founder Michael Dell too find a place in the list.

The Thinkers 50 ranking is based on votes of businessmen, consultants, scholars, and students.

Peter Drucker, who died on November 11, had been ranked the world's top business guru for the
past two years. The European Foundation for Management Development says that the list would
also have included London Business School's Sumantra Ghoshal had he been alive.