Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter is the most influential business thinker in the world, according to Thinkers50, a just-released ranking put out every other year by a consulting firm run by Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove, British business consultants, authors and coaches. The list, which Crainer and Dearlove inaugurated in 2001, has been called the Oscars of management thinking. The 50 names were revealed this evening at a black tie event in London sponsored by companies like Japan’s Fujitsu
Thinkers50 calls Porter, 68, “the father of modern business strategy.” Regarded as an expert on competitiveness, he has consulted with dozens of corporations and a number of national governments including the U.K. “His Five Forces Framework was the definitive approach for decades and is still taught in every business school in the world,” says the Thinkers50 awards announcement. Porter’s theory posits that there are five forces that determine the competitive intensity and attractiveness of an industry. The forces include the threat of substitute products or services, the threat of established rivals and the threat of new entrants. He has also articulated, along with management consultant Mark Kramer, the concept of “shared value,” which says companies can boost profits while addressing social problems. Porter was seventh on the list last year.
The second of three Harvard Business School professors on the list is widely revered best-selling author Clayton Christensen, 63, who topped the Thinkers50 ranking in 2011 and 2013. This year he’s in second place. His 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma is considered his classic work. It introduces the idea of disruptive innovation and explains why management practices that make companies industry leaders also make it tough for companies to develop the kinds of disruptive technologies that upstarts may use to take over markets. Christensen, who survived a heart attack, cancer and a stroke in the space of three years, also wrote How Will You Measure Your Life, about how people can create meaning in their personal lives.
W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, a pair of professors from INSEAD, take third place. INSEAD is a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France; Singapore and Abu Dhabi. Kim and Mauborne are both based in France. They wrote the blockbuster bestseller, Blue Ocean Strategy, which says organizations should focus on "blue ocean" spaces in the marketplace that are free of competitors. Says Thinkers50, their book “has been embraced by companies, not-for-profits and national governments around the world, including Malaysia, which has a national Blue Ocean Strategy.”
To put together the ranking, Crainer and Dearlove first survey votes cast by the public on the Thinkers50 website. Some 20,000 people cast votes this year. Voters can suggest new names or voice support for people who have been on the list in the past. Then Crainer and Dearlove evaluate all the nominees with help from a team of advisers who include people from IE Business School in Madrid, where the two are adjunct professors. Mohi Ahmed, a senior director of innovation at Fujitsu, Harvard Business Review editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius, and author and consultant Deepa Prahalad, whose late father, C.K. Prahalad, topped the list in 2007 and 2009, are also advisors.
Crainer, Dearlove and their advisors use the following criteria to compile the ranking:
1. Relevance of ideas
2. Rigor of research
3. Presentation of ideas
4. Accessibility/dissemination of ideas
5. International outlook
6. Originality of ideas
7. Impact of ideas
8. Practicality of ideas
9. Business sense
10. Power to inspire
They consider the first five criteria based on how the candidates performed in the two years since the last ranking. For the next five they look back at the long term (the last 20 years).
The ranking has evolved since its inception in 2001, when it included business leaders like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, and Nobel Prize-winning economists. In the last few award cycles, Crainer and Dearlove have focused on candidates who have a clearly articulated management approach or philosophy, usually laid out in a book or series of books.
Here are the remainder of the top 10:
4. Canadian technology guru Don Tapscott, 68, is best known for his 2006 book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, which he co-authored with consultant/author Anthony Williams. His latest research looks at how the Internet offers alternative ways to tackle global problems that contrast with traditional structures like the United Nations or national governments.
5. Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, 66, is pioneer of the so-called 360-degree feedback approach. An adjunct professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, he is the author or co-author of more than 30 books including 1996’s The Leader of the Future, which has been translated into 25 languages. In 2010 he published MOJO: How to Get It, How to Keep It, and How to Get It Back If You Lose It. He has written that mojo is “the moment when we do something that’s purposeful, powerful, and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it.”
6. Linda A. Hill is the third Harvard Business School professor on the list. Her books include 2011’s Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader, co-authored with Kent L. Lineback. The book describes how managing three areas—yourself, networks and teams—makes you a better boss. Her most recent work, published in 2014 and written with three co-authors, is Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation.
7. Roger Martin, 59, is the former dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and the author, with former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley, of Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works (2013). Martin pioneered an approach called “integrative thinking,” which advocates balancing two opposing models. Instead of choosing one, he says it’s better to consider each and come up with creative solutions.
8. Cuba-born Herminia Ibarra, a professor at INSEAD, focuses on professional and leadership development, including collaborative leadership, identity, women’s careers and career transitions. In 2003 she published Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. Though she promotes non-linear career paths, she has claimed that she wanted to be an organizational behavior professor since she was 13 years old.
9. Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath, 56, examines strategic business growth in uncertain environments. In her 2013 book, The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving As Fast as Your Business, she argues that strategy and innovation are converging.
10. Daniel Pink, 51, is a “capturer of the business Zeitgeist,” according to the Thinkers50 announcement. The former chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, Pink, 51, has written five bestsellers, which together have sold 2 million copies and been translated into 34 languages. He writes about human motivation and the changing workplace. His books include 2001’s Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working For Yourself and 2009’s Drive: The Truth About What Motivates Us.
For a slide show of the top 10 thinkers, see above. The complete list is on the Thinkers50 website. Click on the T50 ranking under the awards tab.
