The Thinkers 50 - The World's Most Influential Business Writers and Leaders (PDFDrive)

THE THINKERS 50:
The World’s 50 Most

Influential Business
Writers and Leaders
Ciaran Parker
PRAEGER
The Thinkers 50
The Thinkers 50 (US version).indd i 18/04/2006 10:44:00

The Thinkers 50 (US version).indd ii 18/04/2006 10:44:04
THE THINKERS
The World’s 50
50
Most Influential
Business Writers and Leaders
Ciaran Parker
Foreword by Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parker, Ciarán.
The thinkers 50 : the world’s most influential business writers and
leaders / Ciaran Parker ; foreword by Stuart Crainer and Des
Dearlove.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-275-99145-8 (alk. paper)
1. Executives—Biography. 2. Businesspeople—Biography.
3. Business writing. I. Title.
HC29.P37 2006
338.092'2—dc22
2006009985
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2006 by Praeger Publishers
This edition is published under license from London Business Press
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be

reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006009985
ISBN: 0-275-99145-8
First published in 2006

Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.praeger.com
Text design and typesetting by Sparks – www.sparks.co.uk
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the
National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Thank you to Leif Edvinsson, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, Vijay Govindarajan, Rob
Goffee and Gareth Jones, C.K. Prahalad, Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle, Kenichi
Ohmae, and Lynda Gratton for permission to reprint photographs. The photograph of
Govindarajan is by Gilbert Fox, Nordström and Ridderstråle by Thomas Engstrom, Jones and
Goffee by Kim Grace, and Kim and Mauborgne by John Abbott.
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CONTENTS
Foreword by Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove vii
Russell Ackoff 1
Scott Adams 4
Chris Argyris 6
Warren Bennis 9
Jeff Bezos 12
Larry Bossidy 15
Richard Branson 18
James Champy and Michael Hammer 21
Ram Charan 24
Clayton Christensen 27
James C. Collins 30
Stephen Covey 33
Edward de Bono 36
Michael Dell 39
Patrick Dixon 42
Leif Edvinsson 45
Bill Gates 48
Malcolm Gladwell 51
Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones 54
Daniel Goleman 57
Vijay Govindarajan 60
Lynda Gratton 64
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vi Contents
Alan Greenspan 67
Andrew Grove 69
Gary Hamel 72
Charles Handy 75
Geert Hofstede 78
Rosabeth Moss Kanter 81
Robert Kaplan and David Norton 84
Manfred Kets de Vries 87
Rakesh Khurana 90
W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne 93
Naomi Klein 96
Philip Kotler 99
Paul Krugman 102
Costas Markides 105
Henry Mintzberg 108
Geoff rey Moore 111
Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle 114
Kenichi Ohmae 117
Don Peppers 120
Tom Peters 123
Michael Porter 126
C. K. Prahalad 129
Edgar H. Schein 132
Ricardo Semler 135
Peter Senge 138
Thomas A. Stewart 141
Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner 144
Jack Welch 147
Assembling the 50 151

Index 155
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FOREWORD
By Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove
Who is the most influential living management thinker? That was the simple
question that inspired the original Thinkers 50 in 2001. A lot of hard work
and number crunching later, the answer became the first global ranking of
business gurus. At the time, we had no idea that it would prove so popular
– or so influential.
The ranking has now become a bi-annual event. Produced by Suntop Media
in association with the European Foundation for Management Development
(EFMD), it has become the definitive guide to which thinkers and ideas are
in – and which have been consigned to business history. The 2005 ranking
forms the basis for the selection in Ciaran Parker’s book. Thanks to Par-
minder Bahra and Carol Lewis, this ranking was published by The (London)
Times and reached its widest audience yet.
So what does the continued interest in the ranking tell us? For one thing,
it tells us that businesspeople care about ideas and the thinkers who generate
them. It also tells us that although the world of business – and business ideas
– is ever changing, some things remain reassuringly stable. Seven of the top
ten thinkers from the original ranking in 2001 are still there – although their
positions have altered. The great thinkers are not quickly discarded.
These thinkers and many others have contributed and continue to con-
tribute to a steady flow of new ideas that redefine what managers should be
doing, how they should be doing it and, crucially, what their performance is
evaluated against. Today’s theory is tomorrow’s task.
The problem is that in recent years the flow of ideas has become a torrent.
This book aims to make life easier by exploring the ideas and thinkers who are
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viii Foreword
significant among the thousands that have emerged. Some of them are new,
while others have been around in one form or another for years. We make no
apologies for that. Good ideas last long after the fads have evaporated into the
hot air from whence they came.
Indeed, a growing problem is the sheer volume of new ideas touted each
year as “breakthroughs,” new “blueprints for success,” or some other over-
blown claim. Idea after idea is launched with ever-louder fanfare. And the
trumpeting gets more strident. Cynicism is reaching epidemic proportions.
Many of the buzzwords ring hollow. If anything, the credibility gap is
widening. People feel disconnected from the language of management. It
can seem surreal. The irreverent observations of Dilbert and Dogbert have
already made their creator Scott Adams the best-selling business author in
the world – and made him a fixture in the Thinkers 50 (www.thinkers50.
com). The excessive use of buzzwords undermines serious business ideas. The
people who use them are often fashion victims.
“It’s part of the fad cycle,” notes MIT’s Peter Senge, whose place in the
top 50 remains secure, and whose book The Fifth Discipline popularized the
phrase “learning organization.” “People consume then drop fads and ideas all
the time and corporations are no different.”
Such is the cynicism that now exists among some parts of the business
press that there is little real attempt to decipher those with something impor-
tant to say from the merely mellifluous. There is little in the way of quality
control. As a result, managers have been deluged with ideas. In a business
world where information overload is already a major cause of stress, the choice
is either a desperate attempt to read and assimilate everything – or ignore it
altogether.
Most managers are caught in the middle, reading what they can when they
can and trying to sort the nuggets from the rest. We hope the Thinkers 50
can help them in that task.
This is a book for anyone and everyone who cares about business and the
ideas that are shaping it today, tomorrow, and into the future.
Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer, London, January 2006

www.thinkers50.com
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RUSSELL ACKOFF
Educator (2005 Ranking: 26)
Russell L. Ackoff was born in Philadelphia in 1919. He studied architecture

at the University of Pennsylvania but, after graduation, his interest turned to
the philosophy of science, in which he gained a doctorate. He explains that he
was “more interested in people-oriented systems than in buildings” and this
led to an interest in operations research.
He held a professorship at the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland,
Ohio, until he returned to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania,
in 1964. Although he is now retired from formal teaching, he still holds the
Anheuser Busch Emeritus Professorship in Management Science at the
Wharton School of Business. He has also consulted widely; he is the founder
and chairman of the Philadelphia-based INTERACT: The Institute for
Interactive Management Inc.
Russ Ackoff ’s interests have always been extensive. They range from
human behavior to town planning. He has always been interested in systems,
devising ways of describing how (and often why) organizations work or do not
work. This led to his co-authoring Introduction to Operations Research (1957).
Although the concept of operations or operational research had been the
subject of inquiry since World War II, this was the first work to point to the
contributions the discipline could make to the world of business, specifically
industrial manufacturing. All systems, even the most complex and apparently
chaotic, were based on the organization and manipulation of inputs, pref-
erably towards the production of desirable outputs. The more complex the
system, the greater the number of inputs and possible variables that emerge.
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2 The Thinkers 50
As well as leading to a string of further publications, Ackoff ’s operations

research spawned the creation of a new channel of debate among business
thinkers. Ackoff has often been described as the dean of systems thinking.
His alma mater’s School of Engineering even established a think tank named
the Center for the Advancement of Systems Approaches (A-CASA) named
in his honor. The availability of cheaper and yet more powerful computers led
to a related breakthrough: because of a computer’s ability to plot and track
systems, even the most modest organization could benefit from the blessings
of operations research. Ackoff always felt that operations research was more
than the mere quantification of activity. It was, he believed, a way to better
gauge how an organization (and the people in it) really worked.
His writing and lecturing have frequently been marked by caustic wit.
Ackoff felt that operations research had not been fully deployed, that it was
used with only partial understanding and, thus, minimal results. Alternatively,
as Ackoff might have phrased it, operations research had led to corporate con-
stipation. Instead of being allowed to reside in the organizational cranium, it
had been progressively pushed down into the organizational bowels. Extend-
ing the analogy, he stated that when it could no longer be pushed down it was
pushed out. Ackoff was never one for political correctness when it came to
management issues.
In fact, Ackoff has always liked challenging convention. At Wharton,
his program had “no curriculum, no classes, no examinations, no admission
requirements – only exit requirements – in which the students designed their
own education, not only the content but the process of it.” His approach had
its critics to whom he responded: “[T]he worst thing you can do for the long
run is to be successful while breaking rules. You can fail as much as you want
to, as long as you follow the rules.” In terms of managing a business, he wor-
ries that the Internet has led to an overabundance of misinformation, or at
the very least, irrelevant information.
Recently, he has turned his attention to other areas of society, such as
education. He has called for the elimination of teacher education colleges
because he believes teaching often obstructs student learning.
In Re-Creating the Corporation (1999) he comments on the decline in the
corporate age limit. He argues that corporations must forget functional divi-
sions and get all sections singing from the same hymnal. They must plan
and design effectively, and they must introduce authentic internal democracy.

Russell Ackoff 3
They must learn on the hoof and adapt as they learn, never forgetting that the
future belongs to the flexible. In Redesigning Society (2003) Ackoff attempts to
provide solutions to America’s problems through using operations research.
He asserts, “It is only through creative thought and innovation that our soci-
ety will be transformed …”
Other recent publications include Beating the System: Using Creativity to
Outsmart Bureaucracies (2005), a witty collection of anecdotes that sets out
to confront abusive and officious behavior. Some of his most enduring and
idiosyncratic writings are contained in Ackoff ’s Best (1998).
Essential reading
http://www.acasa.upenn.edu/advisory.htm
Introduction to Operations Research (Wiley, 1957) (with C. W. Churchman
and E. L. Arnoff )
Ackoff ’s Best: His Classic Writings on Management (Wiley, 1998)
Re-Creating the Corporation: A Design of Organizations for the 21st Century
(Oxford University Press, 1999)
Redesigning Society (Stanford University Press, 2003) (with Sheldon Rovin)
Beating the System: Using Creativity to Outsmart Bureaucracies (Berrett-
Koehler, 2005)

SCOTT ADAMS
Author and Cartoonist (2005 Ranking: 12)
Scott Adams (born 1957) is the inventor of Dilbert, a character who has
debunked a lot of the fog about the workplace. In plain language, work is still
a four-letter word.
Adams was born in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. He got
an economics degree from Hartwick College and an M.B.A. from UCLA
Berkeley. He worked at Crocker National Bank and then Pacific Bell. He
started more or less at the bottom, as a bank teller (where he was held up
twice at gunpoint), but began a gradual ascent up the corporate pyramid.
This was a journey he found underwhelming, especially the long and incon-
clusive meetings. He was frequently bored out of his tree. Instead of turning
to counseling, drugs or booze he made creative use of this mental down-time,
drawing satirical and grotesque caricatures and cartoons of those around him.
One four-eyed character started to stand out from the crowd in his material.
He christened him “Dilbert.”
In 1988 he submitted some of the Dilbert sketches to the big cartoon syn-
dicates. They were snapped up by United Feature Syndicate. In 1989 Dilbert
was syndicated in 50 newspapers. Today the figure is more than 1,500. Dil-
bert was soon available in a book format. With the rise of the Internet, Dilbert
went cyber. Adams kept his day job with Pacific Bell until 1995. He has since
devoted himself to drawing, giving talks, and writing. One of the products
has been The Dilbert Principle (1996). This stated what most people knew and
felt but had probably been too afraid to say.
Satire as a literary form has a long history. No form of human activity
can ever escape it for long, so modern management and its absurdities was

Scott Adams 5
bound to find its satirist. Each age throws up its own clash of incongruities
between individual and collective, the stated ideal and the observed reality,
not to mention the tension between a world that everyone says is becoming
like heaven on earth but is usually becoming more like hell on earth. There
is the clash between the introvert and the extrovert, the retiring type and
the person whose ego could fill a football stadium. There is always a need to
debunk, for the little boy courageous enough to say, “The Emperor’s wearing
no clothes.” This is what The Dilbert Principle is about.
Dilbert is not overtly political. It is not saying that things should be done in
a particular way. It does not say that the corporate world where many people
work is inherently evil. It’s just stupid a lot of the time. The Dilbert Principle
is about laughing and poking, and, at the end of the day, coping. People in
organizations are faced with two different yet linked realities. They are both
crucial. People flit from one to the other to survive.
Adams followed up with Dogbert’s Management Handbook (1997). Here
the voice of the management guru is transferred from Dilbert to his canine
best friend Dogbert.
Many management gurus preach the need to make the workplace fun.
Humor reduces stress and aids productivity. Some companies employ humor
consultants. However, it can never be enforced. Laughter is still distrusted by
many. It is ambiguous. It is all right while everyone is laughing together, but
what if subordinates are laughing at management instead of with them?
Recent output from Adams includes stuff that is not Dilbert-related, and
for many, not even funny. Examples include the “thought experiment,” God’s
Debris (2004).
Scott Adams is still a licensed hypnotist.
Essential reading
http://www.dilbert.com
The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle’s-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management
Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions (Collins, 1996)
Dogbert’s Management Handbook (Collins, 1997)
It’s Not Funny If I Have to Explain It: A Dilbert Treasury (Andrews McMeel,
2004)

CHRIS ARGYRIS
Chris Argyris was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1923. After service in
World War II he studied psychology at Clark University. He pursued
post-graduate studies in psychology and economics at Kansas University,
eventually earning a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior at Cornell. He was
Beach Professor of Organizational Sciences at Yale before moving to the
faculty at Harvard, where he is currently James Bryan Conant Professor of
Education and Organizational Behavior. He is the author of nearly 20 books
and many articles. He is a director of Monitor consulting company.
Argyris was the first to write about “the learning organization.” It was his
pupil, Peter Senge, who brought the term to a much wider audience through
his book The Fifth Discipline (1990).
Argyris’ early research concentrated on organizational control systems
and how individuals responded to these. This resulted in Personality and
Organization (1957). He later studied the impact of change on an organi-
zation, especially on top-level management, in books like Organizations and
Innovation (1970).
In the 1970s he developed, along with the late Donald Schön, a new theory
of motivation based on unique “mind maps.” They called them “theories-
in-use”; these inform individuals about how to respond to situations. They
are not always visible, because many people feel compelled to defend their
behavior by reference to a more acceptable “mind map.” Argyris termed this
“espoused thought.” Personal effectiveness depended on lessening the gap
between these two mind maps.

Chris Argyris 7
For Argyris, learning proceeds from making mistakes and correcting

them. He identified frameworks or governing variables that determined how
people corrected errors. In an environment in which things like values are
strong and strategies are taken for granted, answers to mistakes are sought
within the existing framework. Argyris calls this “single-loop” learning. It
tends to be self-sustaining and psychologically comforting. If, on the other
hand, the governing variables are rejected and novel answers to problems are
sought instead, “double-loop learning” occurs. This is more valuable for the
organization in times of change.
Argyris then described the implications this had for organizations.
“Single-loop” learning often inhibits creativity and “double-loop” thinking.
Both originated in different mind maps. Argyris called them Model I (single
loop) and Model II (double loop). His research has found that Model I theo-
ries predominate. These are further characterized by:
• Defensiveness
• Hiding and denying uncomfortable information
• Avoiding negativity
• A need to win at all costs
• Worshipping rational behavior and decrying anything that doesn’t con-
form or seems left field
• “Of course I’m right” attitudes
In Model II mind maps there is emphasis on:
• Dialogue
• Sharing tasks and information
• Free choice based on valid information
• Questioning of assumptions
There is a need to move people from Model I to Model II selection. Neither

takes prisoners, nor can co-exist in an organization.
No matter which mind map holds sway, the people in the organization
need to know all about it and their part within it. The dominant mind map is
reflected in the organization as a whole. One in which Model I calls the shots
is defensive. It relies on self-fulfilling prophecies and is learning-challenged.

8 The Thinkers 50
Errors and problems are never properly fixed. The solution? An organization
dominated by Model II, double-loop thinking. Members learn by reflecting
critically. Easy? Well, not really. Model II organizations are still rare; their
scarcity is bemoaned by Argyris.
Argyris has been frustrated at how little impact his theories have had on
management. He knows managers pay lip service to pursuing double-loop
thinking. In reality they prefer the comfort zone of single looping. He puts
much of this down to training and self-delusion. There are companies that
know their problems and their weakness in learning, but they choose to ignore
them. It is only those companies that know how best to use their employees’
talents more effectively that can hope to prosper.
Essential reading
http://www.actionscience.com/index.htm
Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness (Jossey-Bass, 1974)
(with Donald Schön)
Organizational Learning (Addison Wesley, 1978) (with Donald Schön)
Overcoming Organizational Defenses (Prentice Hall, 1990)
Flawed Advice and the Management Trap: How Managers Can Know When
They’re Getting Good Advice and When They’re Not (Oxford University
Press, 1999)
Reasons and Rationalizations: The Limits to Organizational Knowledge (Oxford
University Press, 2004)

WARREN BENNIS
Warren G. Bennis (born 1925) is currently University Professor and Dis-

tinguished Professor of Business Administration at the Marshall School of
the University of Southern California (USC), and is founding chairman of
USC’s Leadership Institute.
Bennis saw military action in Europe in the closing phases of World War
II. At the age of 20 he became one of the youngest infantry commanders in
the U.S. Army and was decorated with the Purple Heart. This is where he
probably became interested in leadership, an interest that has remained with
him throughout his life.
He worked as an adviser to four U.S. presidents, ranging from John F.
Kennedy to Ronald Reagan. According to Bennis, leadership is all about
unlocking individual talents and combining them for the good of all.
He taught on the faculties of Harvard and the University of Boston. He
also worked at MIT’s Sloan School of Management as chairman of the
Organizational Studies Department. Sensing a need to experience the joys
and frustrations of leadership first hand, he left to take up a post in college
administration, first as vice president of the State University of New York at
Buffalo, and then as president of the University of Cincinnati.
Bennis has written over 25 books, nearly all with a common theme (often
mentioned in the title) – leadership. The two most successful volumes to date
have been Leaders (1986) and On Becoming a Leader (1989). Both have been
translated into 20 languages.
Leaders resulted from interviews with 90 leaders, two-thirds of them from
the corporate world. It was not meant to be a work of scientific analysis, brim-

10 The Thinkers 50
ming with charts and statistics. Bennis never pontificates on leadership. The
leaders he interviewed were in their own way very different people with their
own styles of leadership.
He believes that the business leader should have a number of necessary
skills. These are:
• Vision: an idea of where he or she is going – and leading others

• Passion: the means of spreading belief among others
• Integrity: those who are led must be able to invest trust (or money) in the
leader’s vision
• Curiosity: an unwillingness to be satisfied with the mundane and the eve-
ryday
• Courage: a sense of daring and a willingness to take risks
A leader also has to be able to cope with criticism, using it when valid.
In the 1990s Bennis broadened his analysis of leadership. Part of this was
due to the changed circumstances of the business world. Leadership was
easier when there was a nice tidy group of loyal followers. When dealing with
a flatter and more amorphous collective, it gets much harder. Leaders should
still lead from the front, but in the messed-up world of today it is hard to find
where the front is, let alone the back or the middle. He looked at how the
nature of leadership was changing in an era or environment of uncertainty.
He speaks as much about partnership as about leadership. He has also looked
at the strengths that leadership can gain from good cooperation in Organizing
Genius (1997), Co-Leaders (1999), and Managing the Dream (2000). In the
first of these he examined some examples of teamwork from history, such as
the Manhattan Project and the developers of the Apple Macintosh computer.
Although each group is unique, they have certain coincidences. There is a
determination to work for common goals and, often, to make huge personal
sacrifices. However, even in these collectives there is still a need for a leading
figure. He or she reminds the others to keep their eyes on the prize. This type
of leader helps them keep on going when they hit rough patches or snags, or
even acts as a type of protector from the outside world.
The theater-loving Bennis is a very widely read man. This shows up in the
multitude of quotations throughout his work. His biography on the USC
Marshall faculty Web page mentions a still unsatisfied ambition to write a

Warren Bennis 11
“really good one-act play.” He is fond of the pithy aphorism: “The manager is a
copy: the leader is an original” or the equally memorable “The good manager
does things right. The good leader does the right thing.” These have entered
the liturgy of management theory. This is more than verbal grandstanding. It
encapsulates an essential message in a few words. For Bennis, management
and leadership are different tasks.
Essential reading
http://www.usc.edu/programs/cet/faculty_fellows/bennis.html
Leaders (Harper & Row, 1986) (with Bert Nanus)
On Becoming a Leader (Perseus, 1989)
Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration (Perseus, 1997) (with
Patricia Ward Biederman)

JEFF BEZOS
Founder and CEO of Amazon.com
(2005 Ranking: 40)
Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1963. As a boy Jeff was
good with numbers and gadgets. He tried – unsuccessfully – to make a hov-
ercraft out of a vacuum cleaner. He studied computer science and electronic
engineering at Princeton. After graduation, he worked in New York, soon
becoming senior vice president at the investment firm D. E. Shaw at the
tender age of 28.
According to Bezos, one day in the mid-1990s he stumbled over the fact
that the Web was growing by an amazing 2,300 percent per month! It was big
and growing bigger – it had huge potential, but for what?
Bezos was well placed to take the Internet on to the next level. He was
the rare combination of a Wall Street insider and a techno super-literate. He
was not the first to realize the Web could be used for a type of high-tech mail
order. He drew up a short list of potential products. Books were interest-
ing. Unlike the music industry, dominated by six companies, the American
publishing and book retailing market was fairly open. There were big names
there, but none of them had a stranglehold on market share. “There were
no 800-pound gorillas in book publishing or distribution.” There were also
far more units: 1.3 million books versus 300,000 music titles. High velocity
would be a key to success. There were also warehouses big enough to store all
the books available.
Bezos decided to go for it. He gave up his job with all its certainties for the
uncertainty of a new business adventure. He had to relocate. New ideas need

Jeff Bezos 13
space, and New York was just too crowded. Even he did not know exactly
where he was going, but he promised to phone once he got there. He set off
westwards with his wife Mackenzie and their golden retriever in their Chev-
rolet Blazer.
On the surface this move had something of the epic about it, like Moses
going into the Promised Land. It also seemed similar to the American pio-
neers in their covered wagons moving west in previous centuries, battling
hostile Indians and the vicissitudes of nature. Bezos might have been a vision-
ary, but he was no gambler with fortune. There were no hostile Indians, and
the weather service advised travelers of inclement weather. He didn’t need a
carbine, but he did have a laptop computer and a cellular phone. He was able
to contact potential investors and formulate business plans on the journey.
His idea was novel: a huge bookstore in cyberspace. Investors were cautiously
unimpressed. “If I had a nickel for every time a potential investor told me this
wouldn’t work …” His idea had certain attractions, though. There wouldn’t
be a need for conventional bricks-and-mortar bookstores. Staff costs would
be lower. The savings could be passed on to the consumer in lower prices.
Eventually enough investors bought into his idea.
His base would be Washington State in the U.S. northwest, already a
high-tech magnet. The company started modestly enough: three employees
in a garage. It adopted the name “Amazon” because of the links with a huge
ever-changing river.
Within a few years of its establishment Amazon had transformed book
buying. Not only did it offer cheaper prices, but it also offered them to buyers
in the comfort of their own home. It soon realized the value of customer
participation, encouraging book reviews and wish lists. Amazon was able to
change the buying experience. Amazon never forgot purchasers’ habits. The
more you visited the site, the more it knew (or thought it knew) about your
buying habits and preferences.
Amazon has subsequently diversified into music, DVDs and consumer
electronics, cars, holiday gifts, and toys. Bezos has signaled his ambition for
Amazon to become the ultimate retail outlet, selling anything to anybody.
Amazon went public in 1997. The relationship between Amazon and its
stock price has often been paradoxical. The former lost money for years, but
that did not seem to have an impact on the latter. The shares dipped by a fifth
in Q4 of 2001 – when Amazon made its first profits. This encapsulates how

14 The Thinkers 50
e-commerce had changed the world. If you’ve got a great idea, it doesn’t seem
to matter if you lose money at first.
Jeff Bezos is a man of faith in the future. He does not take himself too
seriously. Maybe that is why he has yet to put his ideas and experience in
management into book form. Maybe he hasn’t had time.
Essential reading
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-govBio
&ID=69376

LARRY BOSSIDY
Executive (2005 Ranking: 48)
Lawrence A. Bossidy was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1934. After

working in a local shoe store during his youth, he studied economics at Col-
gate University in New York State. In 1957 he joined General Electric (GE) as
a trainee. He rose steadily through the ranks, occupying numerous executive
positions. He became successively: chief operating officer of General Electric
Credit Corporation (now GE Capital Corporation), executive vice president
and president of GE’s Services and Materials Sector, and finally vice chair-
man and executive officer of General Electric. In 1991 he became chairman
and CEO of Allied Signal.
True to his GE heritage, he was motivated by the ideas of Six Sigma strategy.
This emphasis on growth was reflected in healthy financial returns. In 1999
Allied Signal merged with Honeywell, and Bossidy stayed on as chairman.
One year later he retired – but came back a few months later as chairman and
CEO of Honeywell International. This came in the wake of a failed takeover
bid from his former employer, GE. He was invited to return to the Honey-
well helm for a year so as to “get the company back on track.” He retired for
a second time in 2002. Today, he is a well-known speaker and lecturer and
serves on numerous boards, including the Business Roundtable. His most
noteworthy achievement since retirement has probably been his co-author-
ship of two best-selling management strategy books with his colleague, fellow
management thinker, and corporate coach, Ram Charan.
The first of these, Execution: The Art of Getting Things Done (2002), was not
a manifesto (as the title might suggest) for supporters of capital punishment.
It was, rather, an attempt to show managers and strategists how to translate

16 The Thinkers 50
ideas, especially about growth, into action. Execution may be an art, but it
depends a lot on discipline and action. The book is, at heart, an operations
manifesto, a point Bossidy drove home by commenting: “Many people regard
execution as detail work that’s beneath the dignity of a business leader. That is
wrong. To the contrary, it’s a leader’s most important job. Problems can fester
when there is too little action [or] when the wrong person is in the wrong job
for too long.”
His next collaboration with Ram Charan, Confronting Reality: Doing What
Matters to Get Things Right (2004), wears its heart on its dust jacket. The busi-
ness world is changing for everyone. It is tough to survive, he asserts, but the
only way to survive is to wake up and become more savvy. The best way to do
this is by asking a lot of deep questions. The first set of questions concerns
your company’s position in its particular sector:
• Has the way money is made in your business sector or industry changed?
• Who is winning? Who isn’t? Why?
• If you’re among the winners, how do you stay there?
• If you belong – perhaps not to the losers, but to the “non-winners” – what
should you do to improve things?
Other questions involve inquiry into the fundamentals of the business sector
or industry itself:
• Can you see growth ahead? How do you get there? By beating the competi-
tion or by doing things better or differently?
• If you cannot see growth, what should you do?
• Is your organization fleet-footed enough to exploit growth opportunities
when they emerge, possibly in unsuspecting places?
There are also questions tied to issues specific to industry and technology:
• Are supply and demand in balance?

• Are your products being commoditized?
• Are they structurally defective or heading for obsolescence?
• Where do you stand vis-à-vis the competition?
• How does your stuff look in the eyes of the customer?

Larry Bossidy 17
• Where is the technology going? Can you foresee any big breakthroughs
down the line?
• What about your internal talent? Does it shape up to the competition?
• Do you have legacy costs from the past that may sabotage your competitive
advantage?
Bossidy believes the answers to these questions are rarely to be found within
the organization itself. Insiders (when asked to address such questions) too
often have a built-in distortion filter. They often can’t come to terms with
reality.
However, Bossidy and Charan do more than just ask questions in the book.
They provide a new business point of view that is “robust and reality-based,”
one that takes a holistic view of the business environment. Their proposals are
supplemented by examples from across the corporate world. The model for
the kind of business strategy they suggest involves examination of two factors
and the utilization of a third:
• External realities: financial history, the broader business environment,

root cause analysis (a warts-and-all examination of what went wrong, what
went right, and why)
• Internal activities and standard functions: strategy, operations and tactics,
structures, recruitment, and other related issues
• Financially objective metrics (which must underpin the model): operating
margins, cash flow, and return-on-investment
Essential reading
http://www.honeywell.com/execution/bio_larry.html
Execution: The Art of Getting Things Done (Crown, 2002) (with Ram Charan
and Charles Burck)
Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Right (Crown, 2004)
(with Ram Charan)

RICHARD BRANSON
Chairman of the Virgin Group
(2005 Ranking: 11)
In his youth Richard Branson (born 1950) combined a traditional upbringing

with a rebellious streak. While at Stowe (a “minor” English public school),
he set up Student magazine followed by a student advisory service a year later.
In 1970 he founded a discount mail-order record company with his friend
Nik Powell and established a record shop in London’s Oxford Street. He also
launched a recording label called Virgin. Among the label’s early signings
was Mike Oldfield, whose album Tubular Bells was a great hit. Virgin also
signed up the Sex Pistols when nobody else would. Virgin developed interests
in music publishing and recording studios, eventually becoming the Virgin
Music Group. Branson sold this in 1992 to Thorn EMI. He re-established
his presence in the recording world in 1996 with the launch of V2 Records,
whose stable includes bands like Stereophonics.
The Virgin Group has expanded phenomenally, embracing nearly 200
companies. It is involved in hotels, fitness clubs (Virgin Active), books, soft-
ware production, and film and video editing. There are also Virgin Holidays
and Virgin Credit Cards.
One of the best-known companies has been Virgin Atlantic Airlines,
founded in 1984. This is a long-haul transatlantic carrier, aiming to provide
value-for-money flights on transatlantic routes. There are now cut-price air-
lines, such as Virgin Blue in Australia. In the U.K. there is Virgin Trains.
However, for Branson, Earth is not enough. One of his projects is Virgin
Galactic, which plans to offer affordable space travel for those wanting to

Richard Branson 19
leave the world behind for a few hours. It is certain that its first mission will
carry his beaming, bearded, slightly disheveled face.
Branson is always eager for a new challenge in business. As there are few
interesting ones that he hasn’t tried, he is even open to offers from visitors
to the virgin.com site. He claims that each new business adventure is the
product of instinct, not of financial and strategic planning. He is rather con-
temptuous of business theorizing: “I never get the accountants in before I
start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling …”
Branson has become the most successful brand-master of our time. At the
center of it all is the core brand, Virgin. This spreads its tentacles in the direc-
tions Branson desires in a process often called “virginization.” The Virgin
brand transcends products and industries in a way that defies business sense
about brand dilution. Branson once said, “I want Virgin to be as well known
around the world as Coca-Cola.” Many feel he has succeeded, though others
say he had a head start with the name.
He assigns Virgin’s success to:
• Value for money

• Quality
• Reliability
• Innovation
• Fun
He is not shy of publicity, something he has gained in his various “record-

breaking” balloon and boat trips. He wanted to be the first person to go
around the world in a hot-air balloon, but Steve Fossett beat him to it. When-
ever he tries to break a new record, the vehicle is splattered with the Virgin
logo, giving immense and immeasurable brand placement.
The Virgin brand is big. The Virgin brand is also Richard Branson. He is
careful about the messages that both send out, knowing how one influences
the other. He also knows the value of always appearing to be “cool.”
For Branson life and business are fun: “Sometimes I do wake up in the
mornings and feel like I’ve just had the most incredible dream. I’ve just dreamt
my life.”
He is also heavily involved in charity work. Sometimes this has been con-
troversial, such as his sponsorship of Parents Against Tobacco. He is also a

20 The Thinkers 50
trustee of the Healthcare Foundation in the U.K. For his work in the world
of business, he was knighted in 2000; but he nonetheless prefers to be called,
simply, Richard.
The activities of Virgin/Richard Branson are so visible everywhere that
there apparently is not a need for him to put his ideas on success and entrepre-
neurship into writing. There are Virgin Business Guides on various topics,
such as Do Something Different: Proven Marketing Techniques to Transform
your Business (2001), not written by Branson himself (though usually carry-
ing a foreword by him).
Some of his business philosophy can be found in his autobiography Losing
My Virginity (1999). This gives insights into a lot of his business activity in
the 1970s and ’80s.
Essential reading
http://www.virgin.com/aboutvirgin/allaboutvirgin/whosrichardbranson/
default.asp
Losing My Virginity (Crown, 1999)

JAMES CHAMPY AND
MICHAEL HAMMER
Consultants (2005 Ranking: 44)
Jim Champy was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He trained as a civil

engineer at MIT, though he had initially wanted to become an architect. He
subsequently trained as an attorney. After a spell running the family con-
struction firm, he co-founded Index, a successful management consultancy
that became CSC Index. He later joined Perot Systems, where he is chairman
of consulting.
Michael Hammer also studied engineering at MIT, gaining a Ph.D. For
many years he was a Professor of Computing Science there before founding
Hammer & Company, a management education business.
In the 1980s both men worked on ways of applying the greater availability
of computers to everyday business processes. Many companies feared that
the mere computerization of activities was not leading to greater efficien-
cies in terms of time or money saved. Computerization could deliver these,
they said, but only if it formed part of extensive changes in company practice.
Existing functional divisions were often obstructive and wasteful. “We’ve
had the same answer for 40 years, but the questions have changed.” Com-
panies often needed to be atomized (figuratively) and put back together, or
rather, put back together better. They termed the changes that would have
to be made as corporate or business process reengineering (BPR). Thanks to
their best-selling book Reengineering The Corporation (1993), reengineering
entered the management lexicon.

22 The Thinkers 50
When management thinkers use emotive words like “revolution,” they see
a need to give bangs for bucks. There is no such thing as a quiet revolution.
There has to be blood on the floor. Hammer gave some indication of what
was needed in a Harvard Business Review article called “Reengineering Work:
Don’t Automate, Obliterate.”
BPR started (usually aided by consultants) with an analysis of a company’s
core strengths and the factors that made it better than its competitors. The
second step isolated what contributed to this competitive advantage. Champy
and Hammer termed this business value analysis (BVA). This had to get to the
heart of where the competitive advantage lay. It had to distinguish between
processes and activities that contributed, and those that were secondary or
maybe contributed nothing at all. The final stage was the implementation
of new structures. These were dedicated to the development of competitive
processes adding business value. These often took the form of cross-func-
tional, self-managing teams. This promised efficiency and more growth. It
also seemed to spell the demolition of functional chimneys in firms, and their
replacement by a leaner, flatter structure. This would have better communi-
cation at a horizontal level between teams than would a top-down approach.
Much of BPR’s initial take-up stemmed from frustration at continuing
bureaucracy and top-heavy management structures that thumbed their noses
at the march of technology. Many were fed up with the persistence of quasi-
military hierarchies and departments acting like states within a state. Yet
little in reengineering was new.
Many companies reaped the benefits of the whirlwind of greater efficiency
and more effective use of technology. Kodak cut response times between
order and product delivery by half. Hammer wanted to go further than just
business processes. Reengineering was the work of angels, he once said. It was
tackling the great scandal of our time – inefficiency. Fix that and everything
would fall into place.
At the same time, these companies got smaller and many people were trash-
canned. Those left behind had to work harder or in different ways. So BPR
was derided as verbose window-dressing accompanying downsizing. Others
saw it as a return of the nefarious influence of Frederick Taylor’s scientific
management. Champy’s firm, CSC Index, renamed their offering business
process improvement (BPI) which offered much of the gain of BPR with less
of the pain.

James Champy and Michael Hammer 23
Champy was also sensitive to another big weakness in the application of

BPR. Some managers were very keen for other parts of the organization to be
reengineered, so long as they were left untouched. In his book Reengineering
Management (1995) he wrote, “If their jobs and styles are left largely intact,
managers will eventually undermine the very structures of their rebuilt
organizations.”
Champy has since written The Arc of Ambition (2001). This looks at
visionaries who were considered insane through much of their lifetime. Their
visions were later carried to fruition by capitalists and consolidators, and
their memories were rehabilitated.
Essential reading
(Champy) http://www.jimchampy.com/
(Hammer) http://www.hammerandco.com/about.asp
Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution (Harper
Collins, 1993) (Champy and Hammer)
Reengineering Management: The Mandate for New Leadership (Diane Pub-
lishing, 1995) (Champy)
Fast Forward: The Best Ideas on Managing Business Change (Harvard Business
School Press, 1996) (Champy with Nitin Nohria)
The Arc of Ambition: Defining the Leadership Journey (Perseus, 2001) (Champy
with Nitin Nohria)
X-Engineering the Corporation: Reinventing Your Business in the Digital Age
(Warner, 2002) (Champy)
Beyond Reengineering: How the Process-centered Organization Is Changing Our
Work and Our Lives (Collins, 1998) (Hammer)

RAM CHARAN
Consultant and Executive Coach
(2005 Ranking: 24)
Ram Charan was born and brought up in a small town in rural northern India.
After earning an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, he worked on
the HBS faculty for some years. He then concentrated on his own consul-
tancy and mentoring work. Although he is based in Dallas, Texas, he spends
little time there.
He has coached CEOs of numerous Fortune 100 companies, including
GE’s Jack Welch. However, Charan has never been an éminence grise working
behind the corporate throne. His coaching has been accompanied by a steady
stream of publications available in various formats.
Like many top-notch Indian management thinkers, his upbringing had a
decisive influence on him. He was born into a large family running a small
shoe shop. Everyone had to do their bit to keep the business going – making,
selling and repairing shoes. If it failed, there awaited misery, starvation, and
maybe death. The shoe business helped pay for his education. It also taught
him the importance of business acumen – something that unites the success-
ful Indian fruit seller and the good CEO. Both know the universal laws of
business – cash flow, margin, high velocity, and healthy growth.
His messages for CEOs are shaped by the ups and downs in business activ-
ity. Downturns can be times of opportunity, when it is important to retain a
proactive approach, never losing any opportunity to innovate and communi-
cate with customers and suppliers. Companies must lower their bottom lines

Ram Charan 25
before the competition does. It is easy to imagine Ram Charan as a boxing

coach. His boxer (executive) is behind on points, and between rounds he tells
him, “You’re not going to win the fight sitting in the corner – go out there and
fight.”
As he has coached, he has observed. He has attempted to provide some
answers as to why the management soufflé often falls flat even though all of
the recipe’s ingredients are there in the right quantities. The story of corpo-
rate America (and corporate anywhere) is littered with people who, after a
sequence of bad results, get reassigned to the trashcan. These people worked
hard to get to where they were. They were successful, often spectacularly so.
They were intelligent too, and they often had lots of vision. However, vision
and inspiration are never enough. Ask any of the world’s top golfers. They tee
off with the vision of breaking the course record but, after a couple of visits to
the paddling pool and a few rolls in the heavy rough, they end up missing the
cut. Vision and intelligence fall flat if the execution and the follow-through
are flawed. Effective execution demands having the right people in the right
jobs: people who know what is expected of them. The people at the top need
business acumen; failure results from having someone with the wrong type
of good reputation, say as a dealmaker or someone unable to set priorities.
He never puts CEO failure down to a pithy sound bite. Much of the problem
stems from lack of “emotional strength.”
Ram Charan pursued his own follow-through strategy with his book,
co-authored with Larry Bossidy, entitled Execution (2002). The success-
ful company has good strong leadership, but leadership should be nurtured
throughout the organization. There should be a leadership pipeline within
the organization. There must also be good communications. The CEO is
dependent on having a good and efficient board of directors. Everyone within
the organization has a vital role to play. They should all feel valued, but they
should never be allowed to forget their interdependence. Everyone should
be aware of the big picture and their part in it. This prompted him to write
What The CEO Wants You to Know (2001). This was an unfortunate title, as
it invited “alternatives” such as What the CEO Doesn’t Want You (or anyone
else) to Know (a thicker tome, no doubt). A more appropriate title would have
been What Everyone in Business Should Know.

26 The Thinkers 50
Ram Charan believes in an active, hands-on approach to management, and

is an advocate of management by walking around for the digital age. He cites
Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton as a good role model. The customer should
never be forgotten. Many firms have nose-dived by losing touch with what
their customers want or by being too arrogant to ask.
Essential reading
http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/catalog/results.pperl?authorid=4694
Every Business Is a Growth Business (Wiley, 1999) (with Noel Tichy)
What the CEO Wants You to Know: The Little Book of Big Business (Crown,
2001)
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (Crown, 2002) (with Larry
Bossidy et al.)
Confronting Reality: Master the New Model for Success (Crown, 2004) (with
Larry Bossidy et al.)

CLAYTON
CHRISTENSEN
Clayton Christensen is Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Admin-

istration at the Harvard Business School.
After graduating in economics from Brigham Young University in his
native Utah, he went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, earning an M.Phil. in
Applied Econometrics. He returned to the U.S. and to the Harvard Business
School, gaining an M.B.A. and D.B.A. He worked as a consultant and project
manager with the Boston Consulting Group before establishing Ceramics
Process Systems Corporation (CPS), a high-technology manufacturing
company. In 1992 he returned to Harvard and joined the Business School
faculty.
He is best known to a wider audience as the author of the award-winning
The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997). The technological or digital writing was on
the wall. Technological innovation was no longer an option but an imperative
for survival. Many companies could point to large profits from innovation.
He gave examples of companies with products that changed the competitive
playing field – the Honda Supercub, the Intel 8088 processor. They didn’t
have grand business plans for these products. They went in at the low end of
the market pool and thereby gained entrance to the bigger pool. They eventu-
ally displaced the competition from the high end of the market. Christensen
characterizes these products as disruptive technologies.
So the message was stark: innovate or die. Well, it wasn’t that simple.
Innovation could be tricky. Christensen highlighted that many large exist-

28 The Thinkers 50
ing companies found real innovation not only challenging but also difficult.
Innovation was completely different from mere improvement – fine-tuning
or tinkering with existing systems and structures. However, many firms had
invested a lot in these existing structures and were squeamish about writing
them off. They paid lip service to innovation, but anything that might upset
established certainties was likely to be dismissed. This often blinds compa-
nies to the possibilities and profitability offered by innovation.
Innovating companies need creative people. This causes its own set of
problems for both established companies and start-ups. The brightest and
best may not want to be truly creative (and produce breakthrough solutions)
for someone else. They may prefer to wait until they can go it alone and reap
their own harvest. Retaining free spirits within the corporate structure pro-
vides another dilemma for those wanting to innovate. Some have responded
in novel ways by establishing in-house incubators or promoting the establish-
ment of spin-out companies.
Christensen earned a reputation as the guru of disruption, a late twenti-
eth-century equivalent of the “Lord of Misrule” in medieval carnival. He has
since moved on to a discussion of strategy in the age of innovation. He defines
strategy, perhaps a little narrowly for some, as being about creating competi-
tive advantage. Strategists seem stuck in a time warp of the present. They laud
successful companies like Dell and Cisco Systems. They preach the mantra
“if it’s good for Cisco, chances are it’s good for everyone.” They don’t realize
the success of these companies is specific to the present. There is no guarantee
that they or their models will be profitable in twenty, ten, even five years’ time.
History teaches the transience of corporate success. Models that were suc-
cessful once, such as IBM’s vertical integration in the 1970s, wouldn’t work
now. Instead of preaching emulation, strategists should identify what allows
the Dells and the Cisco Systems to succeed. They should stop identifying
what works and begin to ask (and answer) why it works.
This is important throughout the corporate world. Many mid-sized phar-
maceutical firms are merging, hoping to counter prohibitive costs associated
with the research, development, and testing of new drugs. However, the advent
of new forms of biotechnology, especially connected with exploitation of the
human genome, may reduce these costs. The quest for competitive advantage
can be frustrating: it is like playing hide-and-seek in thick fog. As competi-
tors try to level the playing field the competitive advantage sought (and maybe

Clayton Christensen 29
briefly realized) disappears. So is the pursuit of competitive advantage worth

the candle? Christensen’s answer is a most definite yes. Strategists can play
along too. They must develop a much deeper, almost three-dimensional com-
prehension of “the processes of competition and progress and of the factors
that undergird each advantage.”
Essential reading
http://www.claytonchristensen.com
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
(Harvard Business School Press, 1997)
“The Past and Future of Competitive Advantage,” Sloan Management Review,
Vol. 42 No. 2 (Winter 2001)
The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Harvard
Business School Press, 2003) (with Michael Raynor)

JAMES C. COLLINS
Consultant and Climber
(2005 Ranking: 6)
Jim Collins was born in Boulder, Colorado. He studied business at Stanford

and stayed on at the faculty after graduating. Having taught at Stanford for
seven years, he returned to his hometown to establish what he called a busi-
ness research laboratory. Here he has become “a self-employed professor who
endowed his own chair and granted himself tenure.” His laboratory exam-
ines business issues and structures from a statistical standpoint. “Others like
opinions,” says Collins. “I prefer data.” His desire for certainty contrasts with
his out of work enthusiasm for the uncertainty of mountaineering.
His research work has involved looking at large numbers of companies
to find out what makes some good, others great, and others still downright
awful. This involves a probe into how each company is managed and the role
of its CEO. His research has resulted in four books, including Good to Great
(2001).
Good to Great emerged from a simple question: Can a good company
become a great company? Collins and his researchers’ answer was yes – but
it was not easy. Collins started with a data set of over 1,000 companies but
whittled this down to 11 that had consistently outperformed their rivals.
These companies had things in common, but not what conventional B-school
wisdom said they should have. It was easier to see what they lacked: high-
profile CEOs, cutting-edge technology implementation, a business strategy
or even change management. What Collins did find among the eleven was
a common corporate culture that was big on the very outdated concept of

James C. Collins 31
discipline. This was not the discipline of the martinet, but the good type –
self-discipline. The companies rewarded self-disciplined people who thought
in a self-disciplined way.
However, the difference between the good and the great was also attribut-
able to different types of leadership. Collins says he was initially a leadership
skeptic: it was too simple to pin great success or grim failure on the lapels of a
leader. However, this is what his data was telling him. On further investiga-
tion he identified two levels of leadership – level 5 (the great) and level 4 (the
good).
None of this is cast in stone, and a level 4 leader can improve. Collins cites
Lou Gerstner as an example: a level 4 manager at R.J. Reynolds who became
a level 5 manager at IBM – though not immediately. Level 5 people have an
almost heroic commitment to the company and its mission. The company
gets all their emotions – there is no room or energy for self-promotion. This
does not mean that level 5 managers are shrinking violets. They simply put
the company before, well, everything – family, friends, and probably their
health. But they are never alone. They should have a good team around them.
This is their responsibility. Part of the mettle of the level 5 manager is decid-
ing who should be on the bus and where they should sit.
There are other qualities that set the great apart from the good. These
include the performance of their companies, which can be measured by finan-
cial results. Collins is a keen believer in assessing success through the company’s
stock price. This indicates a preference for publicly quoted companies.
A level 5 leader must also have the respect of other business and indus-
try players, such as competitors. (Respect, of course, has nothing to do with
liking.) They should have an impact on their company – maybe their industry
– that outlasts them.
Collins’ researchers also looked at the identity of CEOs. Those companies
that chose their chief executives from inside the organization did better than
those preferring outsiders. He suggested that outsiders are ignorant of the
company they are entering at the top, having no gestation or apprenticeship
period. He also suggested that outsiders lacked the capacity for commitment
to a long-term relationship along with its necessary sacrifices.
Good CEOs should be neither too humble nor too proud. They should not
be too charismatic. They should ideally stay in the job for a minimum of seven
years, as it is not possible to have any impact in a lesser time.

32 The Thinkers 50
In his earlier book, Built to Last (1995), Collins (along with Jerry Porras)
focused on visionary companies, looking in depth at 18 out of an original list
of many dozens. These 18 companies are united by widespread brand recog-
nition, are world-famous, but have been in business for more than 50 years. It
was their “staying power” that fascinated Collins and Porras; their book thus
tried to dissect and profile true visionary leadership.
Collins’ research stems from the corporate arena, but he reminds his
readers that the lessons he puts forward are equally applicable in the non-
corporate arena.
Essential reading
http://www.jimcollins.com
Beyond Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Com-
pany (Prentice Hall, 1995) (with William Lazier)
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Collins, 1995) (with
Jerry Porras)
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t
(Collins, 2001)

STEPHEN COVEY
Self-helper (2005 Ranking: 18)
Stephen R. Covey (born 1932) is co-founder and co-chairman of Franklin

Covey, “the largest management and leadership development organization
in the world.”
He earned an M.B.A. at Harvard and his doctorate from Brigham Young
University. He worked on the faculty there as a professor of Business Man-
agement and Organizational Behavior.
He is an author, speaker, and success coach. He wrote the best-selling The
7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989). It stayed on the New York Times
best-seller chart for an amazing 260 weeks and is estimated to have sold in
excess of 12 million copies in 32 languages. It was not surprising that it sold
so well since its title alone promised success: it was similar to The Ten Com-
mandments. Its quasi-religious message has been backed up by other books
by Covey, such as Daily Reflections for Highly Reflective People: Living the 7
Habits Every Day (1994). This has the resonance of a call to daily prayer.
Rather than stick with words, he has sought to teach and to coach as well.
He established the very successful Covey Leadership Center near Salt Lake
City. In 1997 it merged with training company Franklin Quest to form Fran-
klin Covey. The company runs seminars, operates a speaker’s bureau, and
produces audiocassettes, videos, and software. It also is heavily involved in
retailing its particular success messages and products, with 110 stores in the
U.S., online shopping facilities, 4,300 employees, and a turnover in excess of
$500 million.
Covey is not afraid to boast. Franklin Covey attracts high-caliber people
to its courses and other offerings. They include people from 90 of the Fortune

34 The Thinkers 50
100 companies and three-quarters from the Fortune 500 list. It operates in
over 90 countries.
So what is the Stephen Covey philosophy? Don’t mention big foreign
words like that! It is a truism to say that it is all just common sense. There is
no theory. A lot of use is made of homespun stuff, the type of thing grandpa
and grandma told their kids. The seven habits are:
1 Be proactive
2 Begin with an end in mind
3 Put first things first
4 Think win/win
5 Seek first to understand, then to be understood
6 Synergize: the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts
7 Sharpen the saw – keep improving and innovating
But Covey admits that he is no guru: “I did not invent the seven habits, they
are universal principles, and most of what I wrote about is just common sense.
I am embarrassed when people talk about the Covey Habits.”
Covey is a devout Mormon for whom material success is to be neither
feared nor shunned. It has been said that much of his thinking is really spir-
itual messages dressed in pinstripes.
He has been awarded numerous distinctions. Covey was awarded the
Thomas More College Medallion for continuing service to humanity as well
as the Sikh’s 1998 International Man of Peace Award.
Since The 7 Habits he has written The 8th Habit (2004). This recognizes
even more the role of the Divine in corporate affairs: “The more we use and
magnify our present talents, the more talents we are given and the greater our
capacity becomes.”
All humans can tap into a reservoir of unexplored potential. But to do this
involves finding a balance of four human attributes: talent, need, passion, and
conscience.
Naturally Dr. Covey is a committed family man. One of his titles is The
7 Habits of Highly Effective Families (1999). He has inculcated the values he
holds dear into his children. His son Sean has even written a book called The
7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens (1998), followed up a year later by Daily
Reflections for Highly Effective Teens (1999).

Stephen Covey 35
Essential reading
http://www.stephencovey.com
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press, 1989)
The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (Free Press, 2004)

EDWARD DE BONO
Lateral Thinker (2005 Ranking: 20)
Edward de Bono (born 1933) studied medicine in his native Malta, before
going to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. There he gained a Ph.D. in psychology
and physiology. He has lectured at many of the world’s leading universities.
He has also consulted to numerous international corporations, many of
which use his works as part of their training programs. His teaching meth-
ods have been used in many schools, from primary to adult education. He
has received several awards and honorary degrees. He has even had a minor
asteroid named in his honor.
De Bono has dedicated his life to researching thought and how humans
perceive and make sense of information. The role of creativity is central. He
has sought a wide audience for his views, although some psychologists have
dismissed this as populism. In The Mechanisms of Mind (1969) he demon-
strated that our perceptions are based on asymmetric pattern formations in
the brain: “Perception is real even when it is not reality.”
This led to the development of his theory of “lateral thinking,” outlined in
works like Lateral Thinking (1977) and Teach Yourself to Think (1995).
In a stable world, human beings apply standard solutions to standard situ-
ations based on tools like analysis, judgment and argument. However, in a
world, or any situation, which is in flux, these standard formulae are inap-
plicable. A common response to a problem has been to identify the cause and
remove it. But this is no longer sufficient. Traditional thinking is all about
what is. Future thinking will need to be about what can be. We may need to
solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward
even if the cause remains in place. Creativity is often called for. De Bono pro-

Edward de Bono 37
vides new tools to help people create solutions to new problems: “If you do not
design the future, someone or something else will design it for you.”
Six Thinking Hats (1985) undermines the importance assigned to argument
as a means of problem solving. De Bono considers it a wasteful form of effort.
It is accompanied by the squandering of intellectual energy and the nurturing
of egos. The Six Hats concept emerged from a study of how the chemistry of
the brain changes with different types of thought. Meetings are unproductive
because of muddled thinking. He sets out a schema like a child’s game, with six
colored hats, each associated with a necessary thought process.
In I Am Right, You Are Wrong (1990) he assesses the world’s inability to
deal with its many problems because it is reliant on old methods of analysis.
Not only are these ineffective at providing solutions, they are also danger-
ous. They generate polarized self-righteousness, as expressed in the title. This
leads to creativity-killing defensiveness.
In New Thinking for the New Millennium (2000) De Bono describes how
the technological advances of the second millennium have not been matched
by changes in the way we think. He also argues for some new approaches
to the use of language, implying that human beings can happily deal with a
higher order of communication.
De Bono has written for many different audiences: parents, teachers,
designers, and especially people in business. One of his most recent contribu-
tions has been The Six Value Medals (2005). Success no longer comes through
analyzing the past but in creating and molding the future. Values persist in
the midst of this contemporary maelstrom: “Effectiveness without values is
a tool without a purpose.” Disputes and controversies develop because values
clash. Each party often believes the only way is to pursue their values to the
end in a zero-sum game – we win and you lose. The way ahead is for everyone
involved in a problem – be they CEOs or people lower down the organization
– to find creative solutions. Values will still come into conflict, but resolving
the conflict can create new opportunities. De Bono highlights the different
types of values in an organization. These may be:
• Human
• Cultural
• Organizational
• Perceptional

38 The Thinkers 50
He has developed a scoring system to measure whether the various values are
strong, sound, weak, or remote.
De Bono claims his theories have been used by companies and govern-
ments around the world. He also claims that he has received reports of from
20 to 90 percent less time being spent in meetings by people who have fol-
lowed his methods.
Essential reading
http://www.edwdebono.com
Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity (Harper & Row, 1977)
Six Thinking Hats (Viking, 1985)
I Am Right, You Are Wrong: From This to the New Renaissance, from Rock Logic
to Water Logic (Viking, 1990)
New Thinking for the New Millennium (New Millennium Entertainment,
2000)
The Six Value Medals (Ebury Press, 2005)

MICHAEL DELL
Chairman and Founder of Dell Computers
(2005 Ranking: 29)
Michael Dell (born 1965) is chairman of Dell Inc. He was born in Houston,
Texas. His mother was a stockbroker. He had an early interest in computers.
He received an Apple II computer for his fifteenth birthday, which, to the
horror of his parents, he proceeded to take apart. He soon switched from
Apple to the newly arrived IBM PCs, customizing them and adding addi-
tional features. Another early interest was making money, and he found that
he could combine the two successfully. His parents had a medical career in
mind for young Michael. He went to the University of Texas at Austin, but he
pursued his ever more lucrative business from his dormitory room.
The concept of customized PCs gave him a business idea. Customers could
get their very own machine or system, catering to their needs with no unnec-
essary or underused extras. If computers could be built to order, it would
mean the middleman in his various retail guises could be cut out of the deal.
This would have enormous cost benefits for the end consumer. There would
be other benefits too. Inventory could be kept low if the assembly was carried
out to order on a just-in-time basis. The customer would still get a high-qual-
ity product for which they were willing to pay, so cash flow would not be a
problem. High velocity would mean substantial returns, even with low mar-
gins. This direct method had been tried before, as Dell admits, but only to
cater to large business accounts.
Rather than wait for someone else to develop the idea, Dell founded Dell
Computer with around $1,000. The rest, they say, is … In his book Direct

40 The Thinkers 50
from Dell (1999), he stated his belief that having limited financial resources
at the start can help a business. In the early days Dell Computer had annual
sales of $6 million, not bad at the time; but this figure was in excess of $41
billion in 2004. It employs over 57,000 “team members” worldwide.
Dell subsequently dropped out of college. His company started making
its own computers. It could offer next-day delivery in the U.S. In 1987 Dell
went international, opening a subsidiary in the U.K. It has since established
manufacturing facilities throughout the world. The company was included in
the Fortune 500 in 1992. Its CEO was only 27, and in the following year the
company was among the top five computer systems providers worldwide. By
2001 it was the number one computer systems provider by market share.
The advent of the Internet was embraced eagerly by Dell. In 1995 order-
ing online was introduced. Five years later daily sales via the Internet were
reckoned to be worth $50 million.
In 1988 Dell Computer went public. It has been an investor’s darling, with
a nearly 50,000 percent increase in value during the 1990s. The new century
has seen a decline in PC sales and margins worldwide, not just for Dell. The
company has responded by putting more emphasis on servers, workstations,
and computer technology services. It has also entered the consumer elec-
tronics industry. To reflect this change in emphasis the company dropped
“computer” from its name to become plain Dell Inc.
For Michael Dell, customers are important. He has claimed that he spends
40 percent of his time with customers. A lot of the rest goes into designing
improved ways to listen to customers. It is more important for a company to
study its customers than its competitors, he advocates.
Dell has created a revolutionary business model. In 1999 he put many of
his thoughts about business into a book – Direct from Dell. These included
his belief in vertical integration in the computer industry. He also gave tips on
how to exploit the competition’s weakness by exposing its greatest strength.
He also stressed the value of communications: between the company, its staff,
its suppliers, and naturally its customers. An important part of communicat-
ing is listening and acting quickly. Errors are thus kept to a minimum.
Dell Inc. has also demonstrated a commitment to the environment. In
2003 it launched Dell Recycle, an initiative to help users of any computer
equipment, regardless of manufacturer, either to recycle it or to donate it to
charity.

Michael Dell 41
Essential reading
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/biographies/
en/msd_index?c=us&l=en&s=corp
Direct From Dell: Strategies that Revolutionized an Industry (Collins, 1999)
(with Catherine Fredman)

PATRICK DIXON
Consultant (2005 Ranking: 17)
Dr. Patrick Dixon is the chairman of Global Change Ltd., a consulting and
forecasting group. He is also a fellow of the Centre for Management Develop-
ment at London Business School.
He is a rare bird among the ranks of management thinkers: he is a physi-
cian. He has achieved fame by taking the pulse of today and attempting to
diagnose the shape of tomorrow.
He is a graduate of King’s College Cambridge and Charing Cross Hos-
pital medical school. In his years as a medical practitioner he combined care
for those suffering from cancer and AIDS with an interest in information
technology. His first book, The Truth About AIDS (1988), coincided with the
foundation of ACET, an international alliance that aimed to educate people
about the disease and treat victims.
The success of this book prompted Dixon to produce more volumes on
topical issues. This coincided with invitations from multinationals to lecture
on a wide range of issues, from corporate governance to the need for better
market research.
Some of his books reflected his interests in Christianity and social action,
such as Signs of Revival (1994) and Cyberchurch (1997). His book The Rising
Price of Love (1995) aimed to show, from a Christian perspective, that “free
love” came at a cost.
In Futurewise (1998) Dixon examines six trends that he identifies as shap-
ing the modern world. The world of the future will be:

Patrick Dixon 43
• Fast: speed, in transport, communications, delivery – in everything – will

be imperative
• Urban: more people will end up living in cities as they grow
• Tribal: cultural and religious conflicts show no sign of disappearing
• Universal: globalization is creating a global marketplace
• Radical: there is a reaction (for good or bad) against much of twentieth-
century morality
• Ethical: a new morality is needed and can be discerned
Some of these trends will conflict; others will resolve themselves. The book
also contains 500 “key expectations.”
The growing power and reach of the Internet is a topic of great interest
to Dixon, and he has used the Internet himself to spread his message. His
website contains the full text of six of his books for free download, as well as
other materials such as videos. In many ways this is an application of direct
methods of sales. He feels pleasure in giving away his intellectual capital. He
sees free availability of ideas as an essential element of the twenty-first-cen-
tury world. “The real added-value … is knowing exactly how to apply ideas
to build a better kind of future for your own business, yourself, family, com-
munity and wider world.” He also operates a Web TV station and has a radio
and recording studio at his home.
His most recent book, Building a Better Business (2005), is not just another
self-help manual. Dixon has a philosophical and spiritual message. Market-
ing, management, and financial issues are still important. The aim of the
better business, though, is not just to make a profit but to attain and consoli-
date a better life and better world. This involves solving long-term dilemmas
like the work/life balance. He sees businesses, large and small, as facing a
motivational crisis. To overcome this they have to “rediscover their real pur-
pose.” He gives a five-point guide to how to do this:
• Reconnect with your true purpose

• Focus far more on the good the company does
• Take a wider view – what else can the company do?
• Connect with the passions of your staff and customers
• Put your money where your mouth is

44 The Thinkers 50
Essential reading
http://www.globalchange.com/cv.htm
Futurewise: Six Faces of Global Change (Harper Collins, 1998)
Building a Better Business (Profile, 2005)

LEIF EDVINSSON
Leif Edvinsson (born 1946) is the Professor of Intellectual Capital at Lund

University, Sweden, the first to hold this academic title. He is also the CEO of
Universal Networking Intellectual Capital. He received an M.B.A. from the
University of California and then returned to the Swedish business world,
where he pursued his skills in training and consulting. He was vice presi-
dent for training and development at S-E Bank; he also served as chairman
of Consultus AB, a Stockholm-based consulting company. Edvinsson was
subsequently appointed the first director of intellectual capital at Skandia
Insurance Company Ltd. He serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for
England’s Brain Trust, which in 1998 awarded him the “Brain of the Year.”
Most recently, he was listed among the top 20 list of Most Admired Knowl-
edge Leaders In The World.
Most people in business know or should know about capital. In general,
the term refers to hard resources, such as monetary wealth or inventories.
Many non-business thinkers, like Karl Marx, have also written on the topic
using different points of view. In the 1980s, many writers focused on social
capital. The following decade saw the birth and nurturing of the concept of
intellectual capital, the collective brainpower of an organization.
Intellectual capital is the intangible learning or accumulated knowledge
that helps an enterprise do what it does, the “capital” that employees bring
home with them in their heads every evening. It is always an intangible asset
– that’s a given. So, before it can be accepted as real capital, a valuation has
to be put on it. While at Skandia, Edvinsson produced the first Intellectual
Capital Annual Report. This led in 1997 to the publication of Intellectual

46 The Thinkers 50
Capital: Realizing Your Company’s True

Value by Finding its Hidden Brainpower. This
book provided the means by which intel-
lectual capital could be calculated into hard
numbers. Edvinsson and co-author Michael
Malone predicted that many firms would
eventually find (via such calculations) that
their intellectual assets outstripped their
physical assets!
However, intellectual capital deals with
far more than mere quantification. Edvins-
son believes that it represents the start of a
compounded valuation. An organization’s intellectual capital, its collective
brainpower, can be multiplied by its structural capital – the elements con-
tained among customers, databases, structures, processes, and brands – thus
creating, in essence, an intellectual capital multiplier.
Edvinsson believes that corporate leadership should be less preoccupied
with items like standard budgets and more open to experimenting, even pro-
totyping, new techniques that involve intangible values such as the rise or fall
of a company’s intellectual capital. Too much stress has historically been set
on traditional measuring methods, he feels. Cost accounting often gives a
distorted, if not misleading, picture of the fortunes or failings of a company.
It is hard to assess intellectual capital, which is why the subject needs rigor-
ous study. For example, the loss of a key technician may even show up as a
gain, depending on how it is evaluated! Edvinsson uses a nautical analogy to
express this. Traditional methods provide the equivalent of latitude readings.
Intellectual capital assessment gives a more complete picture. It is “corporate
longitude.” Thus, the assessment of intellectual capital and the use of mind-
compass methodology are outlined in his book, Corporate Longitude (2002).
One of the new roles of leadership is to protect and nurture intellectual
capital. Because this kind of capital is human, it can be easily destroyed or
rendered less valuable by bad management practices. This can happen when
the working environment is human-averse, even outright hostile to humans.
Factors that can impact intellectual capital negatively are excessively long
work hours or intensely stressful work tasks. Edvinsson argues that, when
such issues are uncovered, managerial defensiveness can be harmful. Instead,

Leif Edvinsson 47
transparency must be the rule. Organizations should welcome new per-

spectives and non-traditional solutions. These can include using part-time
workers to relieve stress levels, as well as utilizing the skills of retired people.
Managers, he believes, should often adopt a more federal structure with less
emphasis on hierarchical command and control. He has even spoken of elimi-
nating traditional offices and replacing them with “knowledge cafes.” The
intellectually capitalized world may be uncomfortable for some, but the gains
outweigh any losses, he asserts. Thus, discomfort could, in the end, be healthy
for all.
Accepting the existence and realizing the potential of intellectual capi-
tal is not just an issue for commercial organizations. Nations, regions, and
cities also have intellectual capital. Some utilize their human capital better
than others. Obviously an important way of utilizing brainpower is through
education, but the education system often needs to be re-thought so that it
produces optimum results for all. For example, Edvinsson talks about intel-
lectual tourism, attracting visitors to come to centers of educational and
technical excellence in order to learn and acquire knowledge. “The intellec-
tual wealth of nations,” says Edvinsson, “is the new wealth of nations.”
Essential reading
http://www.unic.net/
Intellectual Capital: Realizing Your Company’s True Value by Finding its Hidden
Brainpower (Harper Business, 1997) (with Michael S. Malone)
Intellectual Capital: Navigating in the New Business Landscape (New York
University Press, 1998) (with Goran Roos, Nicola Carlo Dragonetti and
Johan Roos)
Corporate Longitude: Discover Your True Position in the Knowledge Economy
(Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2002)
Intellectual Capital for Communities: Nations, Regions, and Cities (Butterworth-
Heinemann, 2005) (with Ahmed Bounfour)

BILL GATES
Visionary (2005 Ranking: 2)
William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle in 1955. He won a place at
Harvard but dropped out, partly through lack of confidence in his teachers.
In 1976 his interest in electronics propelled him to found, with his friend
Paul Allen, a company for writing software for microelectronic devices called
Microsoft. Their first product was a version of the programming language
BASIC for the primitive Altair 8800, the first personal computer in the
world.
Five years later they licensed the operating system MS DOS to IBM for
use with that company’s nascent personal computer. Gates and Allen retained
the right to use and develop the system themselves. Gates had a mission, to
put a personal computer (using Microsoft software and programming lan-
guages) on every desk and in every home. IBM felt that the PC was, at most,
a fad or a toy. The personal computer market mushroomed throughout the
1980s and 1990s and with it grew the success of Microsoft.
Bill Gates likes to portray himself as something of a techno-prophet, but
neither he nor Microsoft has a sure Midas touch. He was at first dismissive
of the Internet, seeing it as a geek’s plaything. Once he realized his mistake,
he made a high-speed U-turn. The result has included Microsoft Outlook.
Microsoft’s operating system for networks and servers, Microsoft NT, was an
expensive flop, and not a few computer professionals see Microsoft software
as “bug-infested” and unreliable. Gates decided in 1998 to reorganize the
company under the banner of VV2 (Vision Version 2). It was split into eight
autonomous units. Gates himself, while remaining at the Microsoft helm, has

Bill Gates 49
taken less of a hands-on approach in recent years. He devotes more of his time
to work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s richest.
Bill Gates does not belong to any university faculty. He does not consult or
coach. Neither does he lecture. He is not a hermit and his thoughts on man-
agement have been made widely available through his two books, The Road
Ahead (1995) and Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999). His involvement
with his company and with the industry as a whole has always been transpar-
ent. People could see (some of) what he was doing at Microsoft.
He has always had quite a lot to say about strategy. In the manner of man-
agement gurus, he has isolated six things that a company should do to achieve
success in any market. It should:
• Concentrate on a market with big potential and few competitors

• Get in early and go in big
• Set up a proprietary position
• Protect that position using every method available
• Aim for high gross margins or the highest available
• Make customers an offer they find hard, if not impossible, to refuse
Microsoft is a knowledge company. Its assets are its highly skilled and crea-
tive workers. It is held together by a digital nervous system (DNS) of e-mail,
allowing instant connectivity. This also allowed Gates a high degree of super-
vision when he was active as CEO. He could supervise and comment upon
even the smallest detail of the work of individual employees.
Some visitors have likened Microsoft’s headquarters to a university campus.
There are lots of opportunities for brainstorming, sharing ideas, and gener-
ally interacting in as informal a way as possible.
Gates has always sought to inject the organization with vital components.
There are five, all of which begin with the letter E:
• Enrichment: employees are attracted by high salaries and retained through

generous option schemes
• Egalitarianism
• Empowerment
• E-mail

50 The Thinkers 50
• Emphasis on performance: employees’ performance is assessed twice

yearly; they receive a mark on a one-to-five scale. A “four” is extraordinar-
ily good; a “one” means they are fired
Bill Gates is not a management guru in the sense of others. He does not
preach, except to his own employees. He does not intimate that what works
(or has worked) for Microsoft can be translated into success elsewhere. How-
ever, his very success inevitably means that what he does at Microsoft is an
object of study and emulation by others.
Essential reading
http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/default.asp
The Road Ahead (Penguin, 1995)
Business @ the Speed of Thought: Using a Digital Nervous System (Warner,
1999)

MALCOLM
GLADWELL
Journalist (2005 Ranking: 31)
Malcolm Gladwell was born in England in 1963 but grew up in Ontario,

Canada. He attended the University of Toronto, earning a history degree in
1984. From 1987 to 1996 he worked on the staff of the Washington Post, first
as a science writer, then as New York Bureau chief. In 1996 he joined the staff
of the New Yorker and continues to write articles on an extensive spectrum
of topics.
It is hard to categorize what Gladwell does. He has written with appar-
ent expertise on a plethora of subjects. He may be described as an observer
of social trends or as a describer of culture in the act of creation. His scope
involves the worlds of science, business, and their intersections with people.
His celebrity so far rests on two books. The Tipping Point (2000) explores
the theme that little things mean a lot. Gladwell looks for the fulcrum, that
point at which loose ends become a critical mass, magically converting the
ordinary into the extraordinary, the little into the many, the normal into the
notable. How this happens often revolves around the character of unique
human beings. Calling it “The Law of the Few,” he feels that tipping points
can be generated by unusual (but far from abnormal) types of people:
• Mavens: these are information brokers and sources; they are people who
know things, who are both teacher and student at the same time but who
do not try to persuade others overtly

52 The Thinkers 50
• Connectors: these are information conduits, a kind of societal glue, who

consciously disseminate ideas
• Salesmen: these are sellers of ideas, people who persuade other people of
the value of the information they proffer
The Law of the Few has the potential to give an idea or a product a property
he calls stickiness. Via this occurrence, an idea or product gets attached to
the general public’s way of life and mode of thinking. Yet, whether it actually
becomes sticky depends on many other factors – sometimes a few simple,
apparently insignificant, changes or enhancements. For Gladwell, the most
important tipping point factor is the right context. An often vital contextual
element is the physical environment we inhabit. If it is congested, untidy, and
unkempt, it can have a serious impact on our individual behavior and on the
receptiveness of individuals to stimuli.
On the adoption of trends and products, he quotes from the work of Geof-
frey Moore who highlights the role of different groups such as innovators,
early adopters, and the early majority in the acceptance of new technology.
Gladwell sees the mavens, connectors, and salesmen as having a specific role
in translating the ideas of the innovators and early adopters. They adapt ideas
so that they are acceptable by the majority, who are, as a rule, more risk-averse
and intuitively conservative.
The Tipping Point is, as Gladwell states on his website, about epidemics: “As
human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and stead-
ily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect. And when
there isn’t – when crime drops dramatically in New York for no apparent
reason, or when a movie made on a shoestring budget ends up making hun-
dreds of millions of dollars – we’re surprised. I’m saying, don’t be surprised.
This is the way social epidemics work.”
In his second book, Blink (2005), he offers a paradox in the subtitle:
how to think without thinking. He says that there are two ways to think
– first, there’s the spur-of-the-moment variety performed very quickly and
apparently independent of the second type of thinking, careful analysis. For
Gladwell, the first kind of thinking is done in a blink. This kind of thinking
often evolves into split-second decision-making, but he argues that this is not
to be considered random or spontaneous. Such decisions can be described as
a “gut response.” Yet, this doesn’t mean that they are irresponsible or trivial.

Malcolm Gladwell 53
The mind may well be making a perfectly sound and rational decision based
on accumulated experience.
In Blink, Gladwell asserts that our mental faculties work so quickly that
we haven’t time to see what is going on. Gladwell examines the psychologi-
cal phenomenon of “thin slicing,” when decisions are made by zeroing in on
relevant information and brushing out irrelevant noise. While snap judgment
may be suspect – and analysis is considered preferable – we resort to the
former only when there is an acute shortage of that luxurious but necessary
commodity for analysis: time.
Gladwell presents examples in which snap judgments prove eventually
correct; conversely, he shows how extended analysis and dissection can ulti-
mately trigger failures. A key point for Gladwell: Humans are hopeless at
analyzing their own responses. They are also less than competent at analyz-
ing the responses of others. He suggests that many marketing errors occur
because too much weight is given to data from the wrong types of test, such
as blind tasting.
Both books are written in a narrative and episodic style, illustrated with
quotations and examples from the real world. In November 2005 we learned
that Blink was to become a movie. Actor-turned-producer Leonardo DiCap-
rio has bought the rights from Gladwell and intends to make a film tied to his
concepts. Gladwell will be involved as an adviser and possible screenwriter.
Essential reading
http://www.gladwell.com/bio.html
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Little, Brown,
2000)
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Little, Brown, 2005)

ROB GOFFEE AND
GARETH JONES
Educator-Executives (2005 Ranking: 45)
Rob Goffee is Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business

School. His initial academic background was in sociology, and he earned his
Ph.D. at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England.
Gareth Jones is a visiting professor at INSEAD, the international business
school in Fontainebleau. He also has a background in social sciences, an inter-
est that began at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. He then joined the
Organizational Behavior Group at London Business School, becoming even-
tually the director of the school’s Accelerated Development Programme. He
left the academic world to be a manager at Polygram, returning to teaching at
Henley Management College. Ultimately, he joined the British Broadcasting
Corporation as director of human resources and internal communications.
He is now one of Europe’s most in-demand business speakers.
Goffee and Jones are the founding partners of Creative Management Asso-
ciates (CMA), a consultancy focused on organizations in which creativity is
a source of competitive strength.
Both men have produced much material in their own right, but it is for
their collaborative work and co-authorship that they are best known. One
of these, The Character of a Corporation (1998), continues the work done on
corporate culture by Charles Handy. It contains insights derived from their
work as consultants. They stress that corporate culture is not just some intan-
gible feeling or set of emotions, but a factor of organizational health that, if
not handled properly, can seriously damage profitability and effectiveness. As

Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones 55
Handy does, they identify four different types

of organizational cultures but use their own
classifications:
• Networked
• Mercenary
• Fragmented
• Communal
No one culture is good or bad, worse or better,

than the others. They all have their positive
and negative aspects. Take the networked cul-
ture: the good side of this is that there are good communications between
people in the organization. Ideas and information flow freely and easily from
where they are generated to where they are wanted and needed. However, this
exemplifies a “good” network culture. “Bad” network cultures host members
who gossip incessantly, spreading bogus news that may be true but which is
usually detrimental to some other associate. As a result of such behavior in
a bad network culture, employees soon become defensive, cliques form, and
work devolves into a civil war. In time, the workplace atmosphere becomes
toxic. Goffee and Jones not only analyze each of the four cultures in this way,
they also give advice so readers can identify their own corporate cultures and
change them for the better.
Their later work includes a 2000 Harvard Business Review article entitled
“Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?” and a book, published in 2006, with
the same title. Goffee and Jones are blunt in criticizing much current corpo-
rate leadership: too many leaders, they say, are instead bureaucrats. Happily,
these two authors do not issue a clarion call for leaders to attempt to become
superheroes. The good leader must try to be human, they assert; he or she
should also be transparent, unafraid to show blind sides or weak spots. This
is the best way to inspire others. Moreover, the inspiration transaction has
to take place on the individual, one-to-one level. Organizations cannot do
anything without dedicated, high-performing individuals. Good leaders rec-
ognize that everyone they lead is, at heart, an individual human being. It is
thus perilous to view an array of individuals as an anonymous collective.

56 The Thinkers 50
Good leaders have the confidence (and also the courage!) to act on intui-
tion. This action must be informed by solid experience. Leaders must also
borrow a very important asset from the acting profession’s repertory of skills
– good timing. An experienced actor knows the appropriateness of every
action, no matter how small. Similarly, good leaders know how to manage
people and events; they know how and when to be tough, but they know that
toughness on its own is never a solution. They know when to temper toughness
with empathy. This range of judgments and actions lies within the abilities
of most people. Thus, good leaders don’t have to be a Superman–Clark Kent
kind of person. They just have to be uniquely and genuinely themselves.
Essential reading
http://whyshouldanyonebeledbyyou.com
The Character of a Corporation: How Your Company’s Culture Can Make or
Break Your Business (Harper Business, 1998)
“Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?” Harvard Business Review, Septem-
ber–October 2000, pp. 62–70
Why Should Anyone Be Led By You? (Harvard Business School Press, 2006)

DANIEL GOLEMAN
Psychologist (2005 Ranking: 42)
Daniel Goleman (born 1946) is a writer and lecturer on psychology and

leadership. He was born in Stockton, California. He studied psychology at
Amherst College, Massachusetts. He then embarked on postgraduate work
at Harvard, earning a masters degree and a doctorate in clinical psychology.
He later taught on the Harvard faculty. For many years he was a regular con-
tributor to the New York Times on psychology and mental health issues.
In the early 1990s he began research into problems that were affecting
American schools at the time. These included student aggression, depression,
and the lack of empathy among students for co-learners and teachers. He
worked out a theory of emotional intelligence, based on extensive research.
The results were published in Emotional Intelligence (1995). Emotional intel-
ligence was separate from and, in Goleman’s view, superior to traditional
rational intelligence, the type measured in IQ tests. “We can be effective only
when the two systems – the emotional brain and the thinking brain – work
together.” The cornerstone of emotional intelligence is the ability to control
and use emotions effectively. The term, although now irrevocably linked with
Goleman, was not his initially, having been coined first by the Israeli psy-
chologist Reuven Bar-On.
In his next book, Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998), Goleman
sought to expand on emotional intelligence in action and how it could
enhance personal and professional effectiveness. It was a necessary skill for
anyone working within an organization and alongside others on a daily basis.
The existence of emotional issues within the workplace had been ignored.
Emotions of any sort were considered superfluous in the business world or

58 The Thinkers 50
the workplace. Goleman stated that emotions were needed by all, but espe-
cially by leaders. Those holding senior executive positions were usually well
endowed with traditional rational intelligence or IQ. What could make them
stand apart from other managers was utilization of emotional intelligence.
Goleman felt that this could be achieved fairly easily, as emotional intelli-
gence could be acquired, maybe after some application. It involved developing
five skills or personality attributes:
• Self-awareness
• Managing emotions
• Motivating others
• Showing empathy
• Staying connected
In The New Leaders (2002) and Primal Leadership (2002), Goleman and a
team of collaborators carried out extensive research on 3,000 executives in
American corporations. There had been a lot of talk about leadership styles
but not much hard data. His findings were that the signals and messages
emanating from leadership figures had a decisive bearing on how employees
throughout the organization viewed management and the overall attributes
of the workplace. Goleman stressed the need for leaders to create a “resonant”
leadership. He also identified six different styles of leadership closely tied to
emotional intelligence. These were:
• Coercive leadership: demanding immediate and unquestioning compli-

ance
• Authoritative leadership: mobilizing towards a shared vision
• Affiliative leadership: creating emotional bonds and harmony
• Democratic leadership: building consensus through participation
• Pacesetting leadership: expecting self-direction
• Coaching leadership: developing people for the future
None of these was any better or worse than the others. In fact, rather than an
individual displaying one particular leadership trait, as had been common in
the past, Goleman argued that the successful leader would have to be able to

Daniel Goleman 59
deploy a suite of these leadership styles in different situations. Human emo-

tions are not easily pigeonholed, so the model is far from set in cement.
Goleman’s work has proved very influential. Emotional Intelligence has
been translated into 33 languages; Working with Emotional Intelligence into
26. Many organizations such as American Express have started to pay more
attention to emotional competence issues. The U.S. Army found it was able
to save nearly $3 million in training costs through an emotional intelligence
initiative.
Essential reading
http://www.eiconsortium.org/members/goleman.htm
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (Bantam, 1995)
Working with Emotional Intelligence (Bantam, 1998)
The New Leaders: Transforming the Art of Leadership into the Science of Results
(Time Warner, 2002) (with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee)
Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence (Harvard
Business School Press, 2002) (with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee)

VIJAY
GOVINDARAJAN
Vijay Govindarajan (or VG as everyone calls him both from affection and for
convenience) is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at
the Tuck School of Business of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hamp-
shire. He is also founder-director of Tuck’s Center for Global Learning.
He acknowledges the unique influence of his grandfather on his life. His
grandfather used to gather together informal groups of people – adults and
children – under the spreading boughs of a banyan tree in his home village
in southern India. There they would discuss issues of common interest. He
helped all, including young children having difficulty with their homework.
VG trained as an accountant in India, earning the Presidential Gold Medal
for coming first out of 10,000 candidates in the Indian CPA’s final exams.
He then left India to pursue further study at Harvard and Michigan State
University. After earning his Ph.D., he taught in India and the U.S. before
finally joining the Tuck faculty in 1985. He has also been a visiting professor
at Harvard Business School and the International University of Japan.
Apart from his teaching commitments, he works widely as a consultant. He
has not yet established a separate organization to promote the VG “brand.”
VG has contributed greatly to thinking about business strategy. He has
developed his “Box 1-2-3 strategy” for any organization attempting to pursue
new initiatives. The first box is the present that has to be managed. Many
organizations think this is all there is to strategy. It is important, but it is not
the only set of issues. More vital are the other two boxes: the past, which has to

be selectively forgotten, and the future,

which must be created. The need for
organizations to actively unlearn and
divest themselves of useless and hin-
dering baggage is important. It is only
when they achieve a partial tabula rasa
that they can start learning about the
world afresh and how they can shape
their futures within it.
He explains: “One way I think about
strategy is to put everything an organi-
zation does into three boxes. Box One
is manage the present; Box Two is selectively forget the past; and Box Three is
create the future. And what I find working with organizations is they always
spend their time in Box One and think they do strategy. While Box One
is incredibly important, it’s all about restructuring, reengineering, making
yourself efficient in what you’re currently doing, strategy is really about boxes
two and three. How do you create the future and simultaneously selectively
forget the past? Strategy is really about creating the future while managing
the present.”
VG has always thought globally. It is a globe not just of first-class flights
from one air-conditioned terminal to another. It includes all the world’s pop-
ulation from the glitziest cities to the poorest villages and rural areas. All
share one thing – potential.
The world’s peoples must learn from each other. The West may have many
technical advantages, but it does not have all the answers. VG has highlighted
the success of organizations in his native India in creating what he and his
collaborator Anil Gupta call a social ecology. They single out Nucor Steel,
citing the intimacy and shared visions between management and workers.
Govindarajan has even advocated a “Small is Beautiful” approach (worthy of
Schumacher, even Gandhi) to industrial plant construction to capture this
miniature economy of scale.
Modern Marketing Management (1999) looked at the implication of
modern marketing strategies on India. It assessed these in the context of the
opening up of the Indian economy and the gradual, though slow, improve-
ment in living standards. “Today, if I have to choose between investing in

62 The Thinkers 50
China and India, I will choose the latter … India has a huge market for all
kinds of products.”
VG’s greatest contribution to management thinking today is in global
business strategy. Much is contained in The Quest for Global Dominance
(2001) and Global Strategy and the Organization (2003) – both co-authored
with Anil Gupta. VG believes that globalization is here to stay – it cannot be
wished away. It has taken over from the world of state-sponsored business.
Breakthroughs in information technology and telecommunications have
made global connectivity an everyday reality.
Thinking and acting globally are no longer options: they are prerequi-
sites. This provides many opportunities. All industries are now global. All
businesses, no matter what their core competencies, must be knowledge busi-
nesses. VG proposes four essential actions to maximize existing and potential
global opportunities. Businesses must:
• Act and think globally – adopt a global mindset

• See geographical and cultural diversities as opportunities
• Aim for industry leadership, establishing strong presence in all key mar-
kets, to convert global presence into global competitive advantage
• Strive to reinvent the global game by continually challenging what they do
and what they think; keep asking core questions about target customers,
value delivery and value creation
Govindarajan’s research has since focused on “strategic innovators.” He and

his co-author Chris Trimble believe that successful innovation requires that
companies go beyond simply introducing new ideas. Instead, they must also
focus on organizational structure. “Innovation isn’t just about visionary
people with great ideas and leadership skills,” they argue. “Success has more
to do with companies making fundamental changes to their organizational
DNA.”
Essential reading
http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/faculty/vg.govindarajan/biography/

The Quest for Global Dominance: Transforming Global Presence into Global
Competitive Advantage (Wiley, 2001) (with Anil K. Gupta)
Global Strategy and the Organization (Wiley, 2003) (with Anil K. Gupta)
Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators (Harvard Business School Press, 2005)
(with Chris Trimble)

LYNDA GRATTON
Lynda Gratton (born 1955) is Professor of Management Practice at London

Business School, where she directs the school’s executive program, “Human
Resource Strategy in Transforming Organizations.” She has written exten-
sively on the issue of human resource management, including her contributions
to Strategic Human Resource Management (1999).
In Living Strategy (2000), Gratton argued that the often repeated phrase
“our people are our greatest assets” must be considered as a self-evident truth
by companies, not a glib cliché. Too many firms fall into the latter category.
Human resource management must be about managing human beings with
a multitude of talents and fears. The new knowledge-based economy is about
ideas that exist in people’s heads. The successful company has to remem-
ber this if it is to retain the best people. Human beings are different from
machines because they have brains and feelings.
Humans adhere to three defining tenets, each of which has its own three-
fold subset of capabilities:
• Humans operate in time. This means they have

– Memories of the past
– A present through which they are hopefully progressing and develop-
ing, while looking both forwards and backwards
– Beliefs in the future
• Humans search for meaning. This means
– Attempting to make sense of the world
– Engaging with the world around them

Lynda Gratton 65
– An eventual creation and pooling of collective viewpoints

• Humans have souls. This means they
– Have a sense of identity
– Can get inspired and feel passionate about things, including their work
– Can join the team or stand on the sidelines
Gratton believes that successful companies should have souls as well. They
must monitor and improve their organization’s emotional health. The two
central points to a corporate soul are
commitment and trust. Employees
must be encouraged to build deeper
trust and exercise greater commit-
ment: neither can be commanded out
of thin air. They can be nurtured only
in an environment of reciprocity.
The book gives practical advice
about making reality out of theory. It does this through a series of steps to be
adopted to implement the living strategy. There are also references to compa-
nies like HP and GlaxoSmithKline that are pursuing living strategies.
In The Democratic Enterprise (2004), Gratton describes how to build
a company based on choice and commitment, where people want to work
because it gives them more than just a paycheck. Creating such a business is
not easy. The starting point is recognizing that the individuals are bigger than
their assigned roles.
There are four essential ingredients to the recipe:
• Creation and support for individual autonomy

• Creation of organizational insight
• Construction of organizational variety
• Construction and crafting of a sense of shared destiny
The result should be a mixed dish – offering speed, flexibility, and commit-
ment. It should be a company in which:
• Talented employees can breathe and develop

• Employees are understood as well as customers

66 The Thinkers 50
• Work content is designed in a flexible way, giving people choice

• There is shared meaning and purpose
Too many employers in the past have treated their employees like children;
the latter have, not surprisingly, responded accordingly. Companies should
allow employees more choice about how, where, and even when they work.
This leads to greater commitment. Gratton offers eight in-depth examples of
enterprises where this is happening:
• Astra Zeneca: transparency in employee access to information about pay

and benefits
• British Petroleum: internal markets for jobs
• British Telecom: greater locational choice for employees
• Goldman Sachs: choice around development of relationships
• Hewlett-Packard: discretion around time issues
• McKinsey & Co.: great transparency in choice of projects by associates
• Sony: engineers have freedom to create meaningful jobs
• Unisys: access to enhanced training opportunities for employees
Essential reading
http://www.lyndagratton.com/
Strategic Human Resource Management: Corporate Rhetoric and Human Real-
ity (Oxford University Press, 1999)
Living Strategy: Putting People at the Heart of Corporate Purpose (Financial
Times Prentice Hall, 2000)
The Democratic Enterprise: Liberating your Business with Freedom, Flexibility
and Commitment (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2004)

ALAN GREENSPAN
Economist (2005 Ranking: 35)
Alan Greenspan (born 1926) was chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve
Board from 1987 until 2005.
He was born in New York City. He studied economics at New York
University, gaining a Ph.D. He worked for over three decades with Townsend-
Greenspan & Company, an economics consultancy firm in New York. He
also gained experience working for the public sector as the chairman of Presi-
dent Gerald Ford’s Council of Economic Advisers, and in the early 1980s
as Chairman of the National Commission on Social Security Reform. He
has also been an economic adviser to a number of public and private bodies,
including the editorial board of Time magazine.
He received a true baptism of fire in his new role at the Fed: the serious
and abrupt disruption in the Wall Street equities market occurred a little
over a month after his appointment. Although this could have been as seri-
ous as the infamous crash of 1929, one of the reasons it was not is generally
considered to be the action of the Federal Reserve in pumping liquidity into
the market. The U.S. economy stumbled, but it did not fall. In the next decade
it experienced unrivalled years of successive growth. Much of this was due
to Greenspan’s “steady-as-she-goes” stewardship. He stood in the center of
economic debate, aiming to avoid inflationary pressures, but at the same time
not being a hostage to fundamentalist anti-inflationism. Once he had set his
course, no bluster from businessmen or politicians distracted him.
There were voices raised against his perceived monetary conservatism,
especially when the U.S. economy was riding high on the wave of “techno-
phoria” in the mid and late 1990s. The economy should not be provoked

68 The Thinkers 50
into overheating, he felt, as it was already demonstrating signs of “irrational

exuberance.” His talismanic position was manifestly demonstrated by his
utterance of those two words in 1996. Some markets dropped as much as five
percent in value. The Dow went down by two percentage points. It is fruit-
less to calculate how much equity value was wiped out by those two words.
It took Genghis Khan far longer to wreak equivalent havoc. But Greenspan
was only speaking candidly about stock prices that seemed to be entering a
stratosphere of unreality.
It is an open secret that he was not too uncomfortable at leaving his posi-
tion and that he wanted to leave earlier. He has found it difficult to deal with
some of the Bush administration’s domestic economic policies, as well as its
often-defensive postures on world trade issues.
Greenspan has not had time to write down his thoughts on economics, or
on anything else. Upon his retirement in January 2006, he will have a little
more time on his hands, so some works from his fingers can be expected.
Numerous books have been written about him though. He knows the impact
that his utterances, whether in print or speech, have on U.S. and world mar-
kets. He is aware that, like anyone associated with a powerful institution, it is
not so much what he says as what he does not say. Every statement, no matter
how banal or unrelated, is devoured and analyzed by economists, stock ana-
lysts, journalists, business pundits, and politicians. The same process is often
applied to what lies between the lines.
Behind the economist playing dice with the world economy, if not with the
universe, appears to be a man of great integrity. He has said: “I have found no
greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict
adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain
as well.”
Essential reading
http://www.federalreserve.gov/bios/greenspan.htm
David B. Sicilia, Greenspan Effect: Words That Move the World’s Markets
(McGraw-Hill, 1999)

ANDREW GROVE
Andy Grove is now senior adviser to executive management at Intel Corpo-

ration, having previously been chairman, CEO, and president. He has also
taught part-time at Stanford’s business school.
Andy Grove was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1936. He lost half his
hearing when he was four and also contracted scarlet fever, which left him
with a weak heart. He emigrated to America in the wake of the crushing
of the Hungarian Revolution by Soviet tanks in 1956. He studied chemical
engineering at City College, New York, and gained a Ph.D. from U.C.-Berke-
ley. He joined the research laboratory of a small computer company, Fairchild
Semiconductor, established by Geoffrey Moore and Robert Noyce, later the
founders of Intel. When they set up the latter company in 1968, Grove joined
them as employee number four. He became president of the company in 1979
and CEO in 1987. He is the author of five books and a large number of articles
and papers, covering a wide spectrum from computer science to business and
motivation.
At Intel he oversaw the move away from semiconductor memory towards a
microprocessor on a single chip. This culminated in the development in 1971
of the Intel 4004. More chip-based microprocessors followed. Grove bat-
tled hard against competition from firms like Motorola to have Intel’s 8088
microprocessor adopted by IBM for its personal computers (PCs). During
his watch as CEO, Grove gained the gratitude of investors when Intel’s stock
price went up 24 times.
He holds several patents on semiconductor and computer technology
applications.

70 The Thinkers 50
Grove has noted the many lessons he has learned as a manager and CEO
in a number of best-selling books. In High-Output Management (1983), he
outlined some of his core principles of management, such as:
• Convert subordinates and co-workers into highly productive team mem-

bers
• Motivate these teams to attain peak performance
• Combine conceptual elegance with a practical understanding of the real-
life scenarios that managers encounter every day
In the book, these principles were accompanied by practical advice about pro-
duction, inspection, and the use of targets.
The defensively titled Only the Paranoid Survive (1996) has been even more
successful. This is a warts-and-all appraisal of the highs and lows of Intel, its
successes, its failures, and how the company and its boss have learned from
them. He defends his reference to paranoia early on: “… [W]hen it comes to
business I believe in the value of paranoia. Business success contains the seeds
of its own destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want
a chunk of your business, and then another and then another until there is
nothing left.”
Grove sees management as being unpredictable. It is punctuated by what
he terms strategic inflection points (SIPs), times when all the rules and par-
adigms of business go up in the air and the earth starts trembling. These
require fundamental changes in strategy, technology, and organization. SIPs
can be caused by the technological developments of competitors or changes in
regulations. Sometimes they seem insignificant at first and only reveal their
true nature later. The good manager has to be able to recognize them when
they happen; better still to anticipate them. One SIP outlined in detail by
Grove was the chaos that ensued after a minor technical fault was found in
its Pentium processor in late 1994. Another situation occurred when Intel
became aware that Japanese manufacturers were able to make better and
cheaper memory chips than Intel. Grove responded, but it took Intel three
years and a lot of money to regain its competitive advantage.
Despite his advocacy of management paranoia, Grove takes an optimistic
approach to technology: “A fundamental rule in technology says that what-
ever can be done will be done.”

Andrew Grove 71
His book Swimming Across: A Memoir (2001) tells of his experiences grow-
ing up in Hungary during World War II when many of his relatives were sent
to Auschwitz and of the poverty and hardships of the post-war years. This
was a side of his life which he had avoided talking about until comparatively
recently.
Essential reading
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/bios/grove.htm
High-Output Management (Random House, 1983)
One on One With Andy Grove: How to Manage Your Boss, Yourself and Your
Co-Workers (Putnam, 1987)
Only the Paranoid Survive (Currency, 1996)
Swimming Across: A Memoir (Warner, 2001)

GARY HAMEL
Gary Hamel (born 1954) is founder and chief executive officer of Strategos, a
consultancy based in Palo Alto, California. He earned his Ph.D. at the Uni-
versity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in international business. That was where
he met and got to know C. K. Prahalad. While the latter stayed on in Ann
Arbor, Hamel crossed the Atlantic and spent a year teaching the M.B.A.
course at the London Business School. He liked teaching but was afraid of
becoming a Monday morning quarterback of the management world. He
yearned to roll up his sleeves and get involved in the real business world. He
felt a near-evangelical destiny to help companies – and so help everyone else.
He left academia, establishing Strategos in 1993.
Hamel’s contributions to management thinking are found in the well-
attended lectures he gives around the world each year, as well as in his
publications. These include numerous articles, some of which have won
awards, and books such as Competing for the Future (1995) (written with C. K.
Prahalad), and Leading the Revolution (2002). His style is deliberately anec-
dotal, illustrating points with clear examples.
Central to his thinking are the concepts of industry foresight, strategic
intent, and the recognition of core competencies. Many companies are locked
in the past. They may be employing out-of-date technologies and work prac-
tices. These kinds of companies are big on command-and-control, but they
stifle innovative thinking. They may be pursuing growth and competitiveness
by a constant, and maybe doomed, process of downsizing accompanied by
slashing costs left, right, and center. They may also be locked in competitive

Gary Hamel 73
strategies that pit them against industry rivals. According to Hamel, the past
must be forgotten in favor of the future and a strategic intent.
Strategic intent is bigger and broader than just strategy. He gives an exam-
ple: John F. Kennedy’s commitment to put an American on the moon before
the end of the 1960s. It was bold, many felt that it was foolish and unattain-
able, but Kennedy’s advisers knew it was doable. A lot of hurdles had to be
cleared, but the intention became a goal, a Holy Grail, that focused minds.
A strategic intent may seem like folly, but it is achievable. That places it on a
different plane from daydreams or corporate fantasy.
A company can determine what is fantasy and what is realizable by referring
to their core competencies. These can be discovered by asking the following
questions:
• What makes us unique?

• How do we satisfy our customers?
• How can we find new ways of doing this?
As an example of a company that has done this successfully, Hamel cites book
retailer Barnes & Noble. The appearance of Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.com seemed
to sound B&N’s death knell by offering far lower prices and a different buying
experience. Amazon did not worry about a network of bricks-and-mortar
stores and staff. Barnes & Noble realized that its bookstores were not liabili-
ties but were among its core competencies. It fitted them out with places to sit
and relax, coffee bars, and areas where kids could play with toys. B&N offered
a new – and different – buying experience.
Hamel says he writes for everyone in an organization, be they “the big
cheese” at the top, or the frustrated inhabitants of a “rat cubicle.” Companies
must identify the revolutionaries in their ranks who may well be sulking in
the cubicles. Instead of shooting revolutionaries, as in the past, they should
harness their ideas and energies. Hamel’s agents provocateurs (wherever they
be) are usually motivated by ten “precepts” (he doesn’t call them command-
ments). They must have:
• Unrealistic expectations
• Elastic business goals and definitions

74 The Thinkers 50
• A cause that inspires them

• An ear for advice and experience
• An open market for ideas
• An open market for capital so investors can fund experimentation
• An open market for talent
• A positive, encouraging attitude to low-risk experimentation
• A cellular organization
• A positive attitude to personal wealth accumulation
Hamel likes revolutionaries and he does not discriminate in favor of dress

codes, age, or appearance. Revolutionaries may even have gray hair – or
maybe none at all. These people work for and run companies that continually
redefine and reinvent themselves and so maintain their value to customers.
An example of a “gray revolutionary” for Hamel is online stockbroker Charles
Schwab.
Essential reading
http://www.garyhamel.com/
Competing for the Future (Harvard Business School Press, 1995) (with C. K.
Prahalad)
Leading the Revolution (Harvard Business School Press, 2002)

CHARLES HANDY
Social Philosopher (2005 Ranking: 10)
Charles Handy (born 1932) is Irish by birth. He was brought up in the genteel
poverty of an Anglican parsonage in a still-rural part of County Kildare. He
pursued his education at Oriel College, Oxford, and then joined Royal Dutch
Shell. The prospect of a posting to Liberia caused Handy to leave Shell in
favor of a position as professor of business management in the newly founded
London Business School. In the mid ’70s he worked for an expert group based
at Windsor Castle, before deciding to plow his own furrow in life as a writer,
lecturer, and consultant.
Handy coined the term “portfolio worker” for someone who worked inde-
pendently of an organization and whose living was drawn from a number of
differing elements, as in a share portfolio. Many people faced this future. The
growth of small, individually run firms, especially in the U.K., has borne him
out.
His first book, Inside Organizations (1976), was an account of contempo-
rary business structure. Some critics said that he had only put forward old
and accepted ideas in a new way.
It was only when Handy parachuted out of the world of secure employment
that his talents as a writer on management (and much else) blossomed. In The
Age of Unreason (1989) he proposed the Shamrock organization as a business
model. Many have tied the symbol to his Irish background. The shamrock has
long been powerful in the Anglican Church of Ireland because of its apocry-
phal use by St. Patrick as a symbol of the Holy Trinity. For Handy, the first
of the three leaves represented the professional managers and administrators
– the organizational core. This leaf is shrinking in size. The second leaf con-

76 The Thinkers 50
tained the contractual fringe. Its contributors to the organization were vital,
but they were outsiders. In the third leaf were portfolio workers as well as
temporary workers and part-timers. They contributed much, but they could
never be considered part of the organization. Many didn’t want to be; they
wanted jobs but not careers. They frequently worked for a number of disparate
organizations. In Handy’s language they were like fleas feeding off elephants.
The latter were the large organizations, the mega-corporations, an analogy he
pursued in the autobiographical The Elephant and the Flea (2001).
When he writes about management Handy is never prescriptive. He
thinks it is a fallacy to believe that there is one, correct style of management.
In Gods of Management (1995) he isolates four different management styles
or cultures and draws an analogy between these and religious cults in ancient
Greece. The partisans of Zeus he compares to those belonging to a club-
like organization. The partisans of Apollo follow a rank culture, found in
bureaucracies and large organizations. Followers of Athena believe in a task-
based culture, often working in teams, while the Dionysians are bigger than
any organization to which they might belong. They are typified by profession-
als like lawyers. No culture is better than the others. Some are simply better
suited to certain contexts. Any of the four could achieve results, but they
should never be forced on an organization that has a different culture.
Reading Charles Handy is like having a conversation in a leafy vicarage on
a Sunday afternoon. Handy directs the discussion but not in a domineering
way. His contributions are peppered with opinionated and frequently amus-
ing asides. His comments are made in a deferentially certain manner.
Handy does not see himself as a management guru, but as a social philoso-
pher. He laments that blind greed still motivates too many: “We have created
a mercenary society. Getting richer and richer, and bigger and bigger, has
become a substitute for not believing in what we are doing.”
Handy’s writings and activities are far-flung. He has always had much to
say (frequently critical) about education. His own education did not prepare
him for “life as a flea.” He believes that little has changed since. Many people
face a flea existence, but they have been given neither the emotional nor the
intellectual tools for it. People will have to craft their own futures, he says,
and he helps those who try. Handy was involved in the development of the

Charles Handy 77
Open University’s M.B.A. program, insisting on the incorporation of practi-

cal, “on-the-job” elements.
He is a frequent broadcaster; this includes his accessible series for the BBC
World Service, The Handy Guide to the Gurus of Management.
Essential reading
http://www.forumforcorporateconscience.com/agenda/handy.html
The Age of Unreason (Harvard Business School Press, 1989)
Gods of Management (Oxford University Press, 1995)
The Elephant and the Flea: Looking Backwards to the Future (Harvard Business
School Press, 2001)

GEERT HOFSTEDE
Researcher (2005 Ranking: 47)
Geert Hofstede (born 1928) is a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Research
on Intercultural Cooperation (IRIC), and Extra-Mural Fellow of the Center
for Economic Research at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He was
formerly Professor of Organizational Anthropology and International Man-
agement at Maastricht University.
He holds a masters degree in mechanical engineering from Delft University
and a Ph.D. in social science from the University of Groningen. In a wide-
ranging life, he has worked in many different fields apart from the academic.
He was a ship’s engineer in the 1940s. He also worked in an Amsterdam fac-
tory. He was a senior psychologist with IBM, which provided him with a rich
reservoir of data. The result was Culture’s Consequences (1981), based on over
10,000 questionnaires sent to IBM staff members in over 60 countries.
Cultural studies have been around for a long time, but nobody had bothered
to apply them to the world of management. Multinationals headquartered in
one country, but with subsidiaries in many others, were a perfect environ-
ment for examining cultural assertions and conflicts.
For Hofstede a culture is “the collective programming of the mind which
distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.”
Each culture has its own symbols, heroes, values, rituals, and practices. He
distinguished four (later raised to five) national cultural categories based on
responses to authority, time, and space. These were:
• Power distance: “the extent to which the less powerful members of organi-
zations … accept and expect that power is distributed unequally”

Geert Hofstede 79
• Individualism/collectivism: the degree to which “the ties that bind” are

loose or all-embracing
• Masculinity/femininity: the distribution of roles between genders, as well
as differences in attitudes between assertiveness (masculinity) and sensi-
tivity and empathy (femininity)
• Uncertainty avoidance: coping with ambiguity – uncertainty-averse cul-
tures avoid ambiguity by rules and unquestioning belief in absolute truth;
they may also be intolerant of dissent
• Long/short-term orientation: long-termers value perseverance and truth;
they put a lot of store in tradition, fulfilling social obligations and saving
face, especially in Eastern cultures
Hofstede found that countries with a “Latin” culture – Spain, Italy, and Latin
America – had high acceptance of power distance. They were also uncer-
tainty averse. He put this down to values inherited from the Roman Empire,
political centralization, and an all-pervasive legal system.
Individualism was strong in the developed world; collectivism strong in
developing countries; masculinity was high in Japan and Germanic coun-
tries; femininity high in Nordic nations and the Netherlands. Uncertainty
aversion was high in Japan and German-speaking cultures, but low in Eng-
lish-speaking, Nordic, and Chinese countries. Long-term orientations were
common in East Asian countries.
Hofstede distinguishes between national and organizational cultures and
says the two are separate. National cultures are based on values, organizational
cultures on practices. National and linguistic boundaries have no effect. Dif-
ferent organizational cultures are found in one country. The five-part model
for national culture is inapplicable to organizations. For organizations, Hof-
stede drew up instead a six-point framework based on:
• Process versus results orientation

• Job versus employee orientation
• Professional versus parochial worldview
• Open versus closed systems
• Tightly versus loosely controlled organizations and practices
• Pragmatic versus normative practices

80 The Thinkers 50
Organizational culture is vital in business: it is what holds an organization

together, especially when it operates in disparate markets. Where an organi-
zation stands is often determined by what industry it is in. Cross-cultural
management is based on handling both national and organizational cultures
at the same time. The latter can be modified over time; changing national cul-
tural dimensions is a far riskier and more difficult project. It is probably best
to accept the given dimensions and deal with their positive aspects.
The need for cross-cultural management, whether of organizations, mar-
kets, or brands, has been made much more acute by globalization. The spread
of the English language may appear to be homogenizing the world, but this is
a delusion. National cultural differences are still deeply entrenched and are
ignored at an organization’s peril.
Essential reading
http://www.geert-hofstede.com
Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-related Values
(McGraw-Hill, 1981)
Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (Intercultural Press, 1994)
Exploring Culture: Exercises, Stories and Synthetic Cultures (Intercultural
Press, 2002)

ROSABETH MOSS
KANTER
Rosabeth Moss Kanter (born 1943) is the Ernest Arbuckle Professor of Busi-
ness Administration at Harvard Business School.
Her background is in sociology. She was a fellow of the Harvard Law
School before gaining a tenured professorship in business at Yale. In 1986
she returned to Harvard’s Business School. She is the author of numerous
books and articles and also has her own consultancy and research company,
Goodmeasure, based in Boston. She says that consulting helps to keep her
creative and allows her to apply what she learns to real-life situations. She is
also a frequent guest lecturer and speaker.
Men and Women of the Corporation (1977) examined, among other things,
how the corporate workplace was dominated by male-held stereotypes.
Women were still an exotic species in middle and top management. Their
rarity made them targets of male prejudice and ignorance.
In the 1980s, her interests broadened to include the phenomenon of
change in organizations and its impact on members and the communities
where they operated. Corporate America was entering a period of profound
transformation to the post-entrepreneurial society. To survive, organiza-
tions would have to change their structures and behavior. What they had
to do was outlined in books like The Change Masters (1988) and the quirkily
titled When Giants Learn to Dance (1989). Hierarchies would be replaced by
smaller, flatter organizations. They would be flexible, fast, focused, friendly,
and most importantly – fun. The new corporate environment would be dom-

82 The Thinkers 50
inated by “PAL” partnerships resulting from pooling, allying, and linking.

The successful managers would be business athletes. They would carry their
ideas by their arguments and personalities. They would co-operate with col-
leagues. They would be all-round players – superb strikers but also good in
defense and midfield. They would possess a portfolio of talents that could be
plugged in anywhere. Their reputation would be beyond reproach. Like the
best superstars, they would be quite humble, even cuddly.
Kanter has continued her researches by looking at how the Internet has
affected companies. In E.volve! (2001) she used her sociological training to
carry out in-depth, questionnaire-based research with hundreds of firms
throughout the world. These were condensed into case studies (not a surpris-
ing format, perhaps, given where she works). She examined how the business
world was evolving in the information age. She also has seven prescriptions
for today’s business leaders. They must:
• Lead by ideas
• Be good at communications (receiving as well as giving, both a good com-
municator and a good listener)
• Be cosmopolitan, not imprisoned by stereotypes
• Be good with complexity
• Be curious
• Care about their customers and workers
• View employees as resources, not subordinates
There is as great a need as ever for strategy according to Kanter; however, the
strategy that will work best is not that of a Clausewitz or a Napoleon. It is
more at home in the theater than on the battlefield. The new strategist should
be like the director of a play. A co-operative spirit that values teamwork over
hierarchy is the best, maybe the only approach.
Kanter is also interested in the impact of the Internet and global connectiv-
ity on wider society. Although she is never shy about prophesying, she admits
that her prognostications may be no more than wishful thinking. The Inter-
net has a potential for great good and universal harm. It can be good not only
for business but also for communities, breaking down barriers of distance and

Rosabeth Moss Kanter 83
distrust. It can have the opposite effect, causing isolation and dependence on
personal computers. Reality can become a virtual world peopled with virtual
personalities, none of whom would have any responsibilities. The potential
for both outcomes exists. It is up to humans to decide which one they want.
Her latest book, Confidence (2004), is based once again on extensive
research. Confidence is central to success in many areas, not just business.
It can flow in vicious cycles, sometimes spiraling downwards. It can be har-
nessed for greater effect through virtuous cycles. Confidence is an essential
part of leadership. Leaders create confidence by setting high (though attain-
able) standards. They should then embody those standards and put processes
in place to attain success.
Essential reading
http://www.goodmeasure.com/
Men and Women of the Corporation (Basic Books, 1977)
The Change Masters: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the American Corpo-
ration (Simon and Schuster, 1983)
When Giants Learn to Dance: Managing the Challenges of Strategy, Manage-
ment and Careers in the 1990s (Simon and Schuster, 1989)
E.volve! Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow (Harvard Business
School Press, 2001)
Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End (Crown,
2004)

ROBERT KAPLAN
AND DAVID NORTON
Educators (2005 Ranking: 22)
Robert S. Kaplan is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development

at Harvard Business School. His background is in electrical engineering.
He received bachelors and masters degrees from the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology, and a doctorate in organizational research from Cornell.
He taught for 16 years at Carnegie-Mellon’s Graduate School of Industrial
Administration (GSIA), before joining the faculty of Harvard Business
School in 1984.
Much of Robert Kaplan’s work has been dedicated to the topic of isolat-
ing and redefining costs. In Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management
Accounting (1987), he lamented the decline of management accounting, which
had been superseded by financial reporting. Important costs were going
unrecognized, and this was having a serious impact on companies’ profitabil-
ity. Throughout the 1980s he pioneered the concept of activity-based costing
(ABC), which looks particularly at the place of overhead and indirect costs
to a business. These had often been misapplied in traditional accounting,
leading to a skewed interpretation of a company’s financial health. ABC was
not intended to be simple. It involves taking a whole new approach to activi-
ties and the constituents that comprise them. Many companies have drawn
back from fully implementing it, preferring to stay with their old tried-and-
tested methods. However, Kaplan has earned considerably from consulting
to those firms that have been prepared to embrace ABC. Other support serv-
ices, including software providers, have stepped in with products. Among the

Robert Kaplan and David Norton 85
firms that implemented ABC was Chrysler (before its marriage to Daimler).
It discovered that the cost of some important components was a whopping
30 times higher than had previously been calculated and costed. This led to
greater reliance on outsourcing of production.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was growing unease about financial
reporting at the corporate board level, especially in public companies. Many
felt that it was being driven by the short-term demands of the stock market
and institutional investors. Kaplan, along with David Norton, president of
consulting company Renaissance Strategy Group, wrote a paper for the Har-
vard Business Review in early 1992 titled “The Balanced Scorecard: Measures
That Drive Results.” It argued for a much broader approach to accounting
and measurement, beyond the purely financial. Other perspectives should be
included, such as:
• Market/Customer perspective: “Identifying the value propositions that

will be delivered to individual segments becomes the key for developing
measures and objectives …”
• Internal perspectives: what the company should be doing internally to
create added value for customers and shareholders
• Innovation and organizational learning: how the company can create value
in the future and the elements it should measure to ensure this
• Employee perspective: turnover and the percentage of employees in direct
contact with customers
It is important to invest for the future and not just in traditional investment
areas; however, financial concerns should not be jettisoned. Standard finan-
cial measures can provide key linkages across the other balanced scorecard
perspectives.
Kaplan and Norton believe the balanced scorecard approach would help
companies identify what they must do to remain important players in the
future. It will help companies turn strategy into targets and show them how
goals can be achieved. The balanced scorecard has the ability to act as a uni-
fying structure for elements within company activity that would otherwise
remain diff use, like product redesign and customer management. It also gives
a more unified picture of the company as a whole, rather than as an aggregate
of different, maybe competing, parts. At the same time it produces goals and

86 The Thinkers 50
targets that are of use to local managers. Kaplan and Norton’s work was wel-
comed by many in organizations, particularly some branches of marketing
and human resource management. Those branches considered it a vindica-
tion of what they had been saying for years, only to be shouted down by people
in the finance department.
Kaplan and Norton came together again to produce a survey of the bal-
anced scorecard in action in The Strategy-Focused Organization (2000).
Essential reading
http://www.bscol.com/bscol/leadership/
The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action (Harvard Business
School Press, 1996) (Kaplan and Norton)
Cost and Effect (Harvard Business School Press, 1997) (Kaplan)
The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive
in the New Business Environment (Harvard Business School Press, 2000)
(Kaplan and Norton)

MANFRED
KETS DE VRIES
Manfred Kets de Vries holds the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chair of

Human Resources Management at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France. He
studied economics at Amsterdam University and then received an M.B.A.
and D.B.A. from Harvard. He subsequently studied psychoanalysis at the
Canadian Psychoanalytic Institute for seven years. He has taught at McGill
University, L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Montreal, and
Harvard Business School. He is the author of over 20 books and consults
widely.
Kets de Vries has put the topic of management on to the analyst’s couch, as
can be seen in his study of the 1990s’ fad of “downsizing.” His research found
that this does not lead to increased efficiency. It leads to an attitude akin to
bereavement following a catastrophe or a massacre. Those who were left suf-
fered from “survivor syndrome”: they felt guilty. They asked themselves why
they had been spared. Top managers felt like executioners. Kets De Vries
put this down to the wrong packaging of downsizing. It should have been
presented as part of a firm’s transformation and long-term objectives, not just
short-term cost reduction.
He has also studied leadership and organization behavior. His research has
included the darker underside of organizations and examinations of execu-
tives who promise much but seriously malfunction. He explored this in works
like Prisoners of Leadership (1990) and Leaders, Fools and Imposters (1993).

88 The Thinkers 50
Many CEOs are obsessive. Business is the sole motivator in their lives,
and other parts of life, like personal relationships, are neglected. The real
disease suffered by too many CEOs is the neurosis of narcissism. Not all nar-
cissism is bad; a certain amount of self-love and self-belief is not only benign
but also necessary in a management figure. Kets de Vries calls this construc-
tive narcissism. Like many psychoanalysts, he traces it back to childhood.
Constructive narcissism is nurtured by a settled, supportive domestic envi-
ronment. The other is malign narcissism, which he calls reactive narcissism.
Much of this can be traced back to a childhood that was anything but stable
and happy. This may have positive outcomes if the person decides that they
want to make things good for people, precisely because they had such a rough
time when young. All too often it leads to the Monte Cristo syndrome – (also
known as the Kenny Rogers syndrome – you’re not really cheatin’, you’re just
gettin’ even). You have goals but you will use anyone and any method to attain
them. This type of CEO loses all sense of boundaries to reality. He does not
like hearing bad news or criticism, so he only gets filtered information and
lots of praise.
Kets de Vries has also written about leadership charisma. He believes it is
an illusion, that people project their fantasies on to a leadership figure. The
charismatic leader can usually get results if he tries. He must inspire, perhaps
through rhetorical gifts. He should be a good communicator using symbols
that ring the right notes. The charismatic leader should have a good memory
and be able to recall people’s names unaided. He should also have the Teddy
Bear factor – the ability to make people feel comfortable around him. How-
ever, one can be a very effective leader without charisma.
One of the assets of an effective leader is to know his weaknesses and to be
able to effectively delegate. Kets de Vries calls this the creation of an executive
role constellation.
He believes that there is still a need for the heroic leader, the one who
battles against the odds and turns around a flagging business. This is true in
spite of an apparent shift away from the macho to the quiet leader type. In a
world beset by change and uncertainty, many feel insecure. They look for and
follow a strong leader because he seems to offer them protection. This is true
of all cultures, not just the more individualistic cultures of the West. He is

Manfred Kets de Vries 89
dismissive of the often-destructive role of the media in leadership creation.

He commented, “[T]he moment you get on the front of Fortune or Business-
Week, it’s the beginning of the end.”
Essential reading
http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/faculty/profiles/mketsdevries/
The Neurotic Organization (Jossey-Bass, 1983) (with D. Miller)
The Happiness Equation: A Winning Formula for Happiness and Success (Ver-
milion, 2002) (with Elisabet Engellau)
Are Leaders Born or Are They Made? The Case of Alexander the Great (Karnac,
2004) (with Elisabet Engellau)

RAKESH KHURANA
Rakesh Khurana (born 1967) is associate professor of organizational behav-

ior at Harvard Business School. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell
University. After founding Cambridge Technology Partners, he returned to
graduate study, earning a masters degree in sociology and a Ph.D. in organi-
zation behavior, both from Harvard. After teaching at MIT for two years he
moved back to Harvard.
Professor Khurana has applied much of the work of sociologist Max Weber,
especially social network theory, to the world of top-level management.
His greatest contribution to management studies to date has been a study
of the CEO jobs market, published as Searching for a Corporate Savior (2002).
Khurana considers that its restrictions and secretive nature mean that it
cannot be considered a proper market at all.
It’s tough at the top, according to Khurana. Leadership has its privileges,
but complacency is rewarded by a parting of the ways. It has been estimated
that two-thirds of the world’s leading companies have changed their chief
executive officers since 1995. Leadership expert Warren Bennis has applied a
unique moniker to the phenomenon – CEO churn. Rakesh Khurana, while
still at MIT, found that CEOs appointed after 1985 were three times more
likely to be fired than those appointed earlier. He asked what was causing
this volatility.
According to Khurana, the answer can be found in the business world.
Until the last 20 years, CEOs usually emerged from the ranks of organi-
zations where they had spent their working lives. The growth of investor
capitalism has spelled a shift in corporate politics in publicly quoted compa-

Rakesh Khurana 91
nies. Large institutional investors interested in good returns on investment

and high multiples are not content to remain passive in companies where they
have large chunks of equity. In the past two decades, many have lost confi-
dence in CEOs. They no longer trust that CEOs have their interests at heart.
When a company fails to deliver, the institutional investors have used their
muscle to engineer a change. The chief is dropped in favor of someone who
promises better performance. This corporate savior (as Khurana calls him)
is nearly always found outside the company. He may know nothing about the
company or even the industry. He may lack managerial or strategic skills, but
he has charisma, combined with a reputation as a new economy guy prepared
to let talent in the organization take risks.
A rarified niche labor market has opened up for superstar CEOs who tend
to have the same multicultural backgrounds. Their track records have usu-
ally included a few high-profile corporate turnarounds. Increasingly they are
difficult to distinguish from one another. The corporate savior must have
widespread credibility – street cred – Wall Street cred. The methods for
choosing a savior are attended with much secrecy and nobody really knows
what goes on, not even highly placed company insiders. That the selection of
such powerful people is still clouded in obfuscation is not good for the image
of corporate America.
Once chosen, the CEO brings his kudos and charisma with him. The
investment community, whether stock analysts or investors, expects great
things, and so the stock price rises – to the delight of the big institutional
investors. There is often a simplistic inflating of the role of the CEO in a
company: a good CEO should make a good company. Unattainable and unre-
alistic expectations are aroused.
The future is not always rewarded with the sweet-smelling flowers of suc-
cess, however. There is internal dissatisfaction, combined with bruised egos
and disappointed expectation. There is institutionalized friction and resist-
ance to change. There may also be a hemorrhage of some of the firm’s best
people. The new CEO has probably been called a superstar so many times
that he starts to believe it. This causes communications problems. He might
not realize that the chalice is poisoned.
Khurana’s most recent research has retained its concentration on man-
agement personnel. It has shifted to examine the professionalization of
management alongside medicine, architecture, or law. Sociologists have long

92 The Thinkers 50
agreed that managers are very near the top of the social pile: they earn good
salaries and enjoy social respect and deference. But, unlike other profes-
sions, there is no ritualized process of professionalization that can certify
the inductee as a member. There is no professional body of management enti-
tling members to act or practice exclusively as managers. It is true that the
M.B.A. qualification, earned from one of the better B-schools, has become
increasingly necessary for entry into management; however, this is not rigidly
exclusive.
Essential reading
http://rakeshkhurana.typepad.com/about.html
Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Search for Charismatic CEOs
(Princeton University Press, 2002)

W. CHAN KIM AND
RENÉE MAUBORGNE
W. Chan Kim is The Boston Consulting Group Bruce D. Henderson Chair

Professor of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD Business
School, France. Prior to joining the INSEAD faculty, he was a professor at
the University of Michigan Business School. Renée Mauborgne is Distin-
guished Fellow and affiliate Professor of Strategy and Management, also at
INSEAD.
Their recent publication, Blue Ocean Strategy (2005), is a summation of
a decade of articles on value innovation, including one in the Harvard Busi-
ness Review. Kim and Mauborgne have presented themselves as unashamed
strategic iconoclasts. The thinking behind most business strategy sees the
agents as either individual companies or industries as a whole. The scene for
strategic activity is essentially fixed and finite. Analogies were often made
with the field of battle or the theater of war. Some strategists went further in
borrowing military symbols. They talked about headquarters rather than the
corporate head office. The battlefield was fixed in area; no new land could be
added to it or created. Any struggles that took place were zero-sum games.
These conflicts were intense and bloody (in figurative terms), staining red the
ground on which they were fought.
Anecdotal evidence pointed to a different, non-static commercial bat-
tlefield. Industries and businesses grow up, while others decay. Kim and
Mauborgne established a historical database of businesses. This showed that
very few of the industries in existence in the first decade of the twentieth

94 The Thinkers 50
century were still in the picture a century later. Their research also showed
that new industries are being created at a phenomenal rate, far faster than
ever before. Where is the finite theater of battle, they ask? The world is not
stained red from the blood of conflict. There are vast areas of “blue ocean”
to be tapped. According to Kim and Mauborgne, there is a huge and under-
estimated capacity to create new industries. Most strategists seem, at best,
ambivalent about this.
The successful industries of today were unheard of 30 years ago. A simi-
lar pattern can, with confidence, be projected into the future. The only
certainty is that most industries are important at some time, but no indus-
try remains great forever; the same can be
said about companies. This demonstrates
the unsuitability of companies and indus-
tries as subjects for strategic inquiry. These
patterns have nothing to do with business
cycles. “The moment you take an industry-
deterministic view of your company you are
a victim of that industry.”
There is no reason why, with a bold
and creative approach, declines cannot be
halted and turned around. What matters
most are “smart strategic moves.” The most
important of these is the creation and cap-
turing of new market space. To return to
the earlier analogy, new land is needed. This
reclamation is affected by strategic moves. These are “the actions of players in
conceiving, launching, and realizing business ideals.” Kim and Mauborgne
give a number of examples. The introduction of the Model T by Ford in 1908
was a strategic move par excellence. It launched the American auto industry
and catapulted Ford to a predominant market share. When, in 1924, General
Motors launched its cars “for every purpose and every purse,” it knocked Ford
out of the box, soon gaining a 50 percent market share. This was also a strate-
gic move. It revitalized the auto industry. Both Ford and then GM achieved
value innovation. The secret to success is realizing what are the smart and
strategic moves. As the experience of Ford and many others shows, strategic
moves can and often are copied eventually. Those seeking azure-blue seas

W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne 95
must be aware that, sooner or later, they will be dyed blood red as the forces
of corporate competition take them over.
While that may be inevitable, it should not stop the search for value innova-
tion. What Kim and Mauborgne are telling business is to forget about the old
stresses. Don’t try fighting in territory that is contested; find a new market.
Stop worrying about the competition – make it irrelevant. This way it is pos-
sible to offer lower prices and a differentiated product or service.
Value innovation is a function of strategy. Another important notion of
contemporary business is “fair process.” This is a vital part of successful man-
agement. It involves recognition of employees through engagement. Its aim
is to gain the emotional and intellectual commitment of employees who are a
company’s single greatest asset.
Essential reading
http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the
Competition Irrelevant (Harvard Business School Press, 2005)

NAOMI KLEIN
Naomi Klein (born 1970) is a Canadian journalist and author. She is best
known for her book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (2000), an
examination of anti-corporate activism throughout the world. This has been
called “the Das Kapital of the anti-globalization movement.” The book has
already been translated into 16 languages.
Klein also writes regularly for the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper
in Canada and The Guardian in the U.K. Apart from her writing activities,
Klein has lectured at Harvard, Yale, and New York University.
In her youth, Klein was obsessed with brands and logos, like those of
McDonald’s and Shell. She thought if she could climb on to the fluorescent
signs it would be “like touching something from another dimension.” This
was translated during her teenage years into an obsession for designer clothes.
She was described in high school as the pupil most likely to end up in jail.
She went from the brands’ greatest fan to their most trenchant critic in the
book No Logo.
Logos and brands have become a forceful international language, under-
stood and recognized by billions. They are everywhere, even on the space
station. We are being united by what we are being sold. However, the means
of advertising have become more pervasive. No longer content with maga-
zines, billboards, or television, some companies are using nifty new tricks.
Young people are being targeted at schools and colleges.

Naomi Klein 97
Brands find the Internet to be an El Dorado. Free of the traditional bur-

dens of shops and factories they are “…free to soar, less as the disseminators
of goods or services than as collective hallucinations.” The companies behind
them offer a commitment to multicultural diversity. This is a sham: it only
creates more buying and selling opportunities. In their domination and re-
creation of taste, they practice censorship, so that they are not just dominating
the world, they are shaping its mindset as well.
Logos and brands have a very harmful impact on many of the world’s
societies, be they producers or consumers. Klein looks in detail at the status
of workers for some of these corporations, quoting a senior executive who
described the idea of a “living wage” for some employees as “romantically
appealing” but no more. She also writes about the increasing use of “perma-
temps” or workers who have very responsible jobs but are not allowed any of
the benefits of permanent workers like pensions and healthcare benefits. Her
book was taken up as a rallying cry by hosts of young people who had previ-
ously had no interest in politics or movements. The British band Radiohead
banned logos from their gigs after reading her book.
Apart from giving a voice to the anti-corporate movement, she also describes
it. Unlike other movements, it is noticeable for its lack of clear organization
and traditional leadership. It appears anarchic. What leadership exists is
likely to be ephemeral, provided by pop stars. These people are often applying
their own carefully crafted brand image. These happenings are characterized
by “grass roots” movements. The book was very popular with people in search
of something to believe in, although it was patently one-sided. It was also the
work of a very good journalist – someone who can bring facts into view – but
there was little analysis or theory beyond a simplistic anti-capitalism.
Her next book, Fences and Windows (2001), was never meant to be a
follow-up to No Logo. It is a collection of articles on the anti-globalization
movement since the World Trade Organization Summit in Seattle in 2001.
Klein describes the battles between the police and protesters as “an activist
model that mirrors the organic decentralized pathways of the Internet – the
Internet come to life.”
Many of Naomi Klein’s articles and dispatches, as well as answers to ques-
tions such as “How can I consume ethically?” are available on her website.

98 The Thinkers 50
Essential reading
http://www.nologo.org
No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Vintage Canada, 2000)
Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization
Debate (Vintage Canada, 2001)

PHILIP KOTLER
Philip Kotler (born 1931) is the S. C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of

International Marketing at the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Manage-
ment, Northwestern University. Apart from his teaching and writing, Kotler
has worked as a marketing consultant to many of America’s top companies.
Although his name is now inseparable from marketing, Kotler trained as
an economist. He gained a masters degree from the University of Chicago and
a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He returned to
Chicago to complete post-doctoral research in behavioral sciences, as well as
undertaking research in mathematics at Harvard.
When it comes to marketing, Professor Kotler wrote the book on the sub-
ject. His Marketing Management: Application, Planning, Implementation and
Control (1967), now in its twelfth edition, is the core text of marketing courses
in most M.B.A. programs.
Peter Drucker was the first to urge management to take marketing seriously.
It was not just a fancy form of salesmanship, but one of the most important
company functions (along with innovation). Before Kotler marketing was
synonymous with the marketing mix and the four Ps (product, pricing, place,
and promotion). As the marketing concept became much broader, the four
Ps had to be redefined too. Central to the book is the need for companies to
actively create and nurture markets. “Good companies will meet needs; great
companies will create markets,” he noted.
This involved areas such as marketing planning, market research, and
customer relationship management. Kotler has written that marketing is

100 The Thinkers 50
vital to “value creation and raising the world’s living standards.” It is “meeting
needs profitably.” He has always tried to expand discussions about market-
ing beyond production and service provision. He has written books on the
marketing of places, ideas, and celebrities (High Visibility, 1987). He has also
produced works for specialist audiences like not-for-profit organizations,
religious congregations, even museums. He believes that the most satisfying
marketing job in the world is bringing “more health and education to people
and making a real difference in their quality of life.”
The business world has changed a lot since Marketing Management was
first published. The nature of the four Ps had undergone transformation.
Kotler considers that they are still important building blocks, but that each
one has developed its own subset of tools. Instead of just a marketing mix,
there is a pricing mix, a positioning mix, and so on. Markets and media have
become more sophisticated. The power of brands has grown. So too have the
means by which producers and providers can create awareness. Marketing is
now a global activity. The world of marketing is dynamic.
Kotler has conducted research into the impact of the Internet on the mar-
keting concept and examines this in one of his latest books, Marketing Moves
(2002). He talks about holistic marketing: “… where a company combines
the informational power of enterprise resource planning, supply chain man-
agement, and customer relationship management to leverage greater success
in the marketplace.” This often leads to collaborative networks using the
Internet, corporate intranets, and extranets to achieve growth. It is holistic
because it no longer sees marketing as a discrete, department-bound activity.
It must become “the architect of the company’s demand-and-supply chain and
its network of collaborators.”
Marketing has to be at the center of business activity. It must concentrate
on customers: “Customer focus is critical in a world no longer marked by a
shortage of goods but by a shortage of customers.” He has looked at companies
like Amazon.com. It initially seemed to possess great competitive advantage
because it did not have huge physical assets. It had to spend huge amounts on
marketing to build its brand and retain customer loyalty. Kotler also believes
that “M-marketing,” using mobile devices like mobile phones, will grow in
importance. Marketing managers will have to develop skills in:

Philip Kotler 101
• Database management and data mining

• Partnership relationship management
• Telemarketing and call-center management
• Customization of offerings, services, and messages
• Experiential marketing
He also foresees marketing managers having access to “real-time” information

dashboards. This will allow them to track prices, costs, and sales of individual
products in real time.
Essential reading
http://www.kotlermarketing.com/resources/philipkotler.html
Principles of Marketing (Prentice Hall, 1999)
Social Marketing: Improving the Quality of Life (Free Press, 2002)
Marketing Moves: A New Approach to Profits, Growth and Renewal (Harvard
Business School Press, 2002)
Marketing Management: Application, Planning, Implementation and Control
(1967); 12th edition (Prentice Hall, 2005) (with Kevin Keller)

PAUL KRUGMAN
Economist and Columnist
(2005 Ranking: 39)
Paul Krugman (born 1953) is Professor of Economics and International

Affairs at Princeton. He is a native of New York’s Long Island. In his youth
he dreamed of becoming a “psychohistorian” à la Isaac Asimov: someone who
could predict the future. Disabused of such ideals, he studied economics at
Yale, and received a doctorate from M.I.T. – probably the nearest equivalent.
He subsequently taught at both institutions as well as at Stanford. He is rec-
ognized among economists as a doyen of the New Trade Theory. This theory
seeks to overturn the traditional notions of international trade, still rooted
in Ricardian Comparative Advantage. Technology is driving and molding
world trade.
Krugman worked briefly on the Council of Economic Advisers. Most poli-
ticians have considered him too volatile to serve for long in high-profile public
roles. He has attacked the domination of policy entrepreneurs – unqualified
hacks whose policies and decisions are motivated by short-term electoral spin
– in all administrations. These people “… repeat silly clichés but imagine
themselves to be sophisticated.”
While he has earned the respect of his fellow economists, he is better
known to a wider world through his books and writings. The first was The Age
of Diminished Expectations (1994). Peddling Prosperity (1994) was an attack
on the policy entrepreneurs behind much of the Clinton Administration’s
economic policy. From the mid 1990s Krugman has collected many of his
shorter pieces and articles into books like Pop Internationalism (1996) and The

Paul Krugman 103
Accidental Theorist (1999), subtitled (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) Dispatches

from the Dismal Science. There are also his widely read and widely syndicated
op-ed pieces in The New York Times and his writing for such popular maga-
zines as Fortune and Slate.
The Return of Depression Economics (1999) was written at the height
of sustained economic, mainly technology-driven, growth. It sounded a
commonsensical warning – what goes up must … This was backed up by
examination of the fragility of economic success, especially that in Southeast
Asia, which had been brought to a painful though temporary halt by the cur-
rency crises of 1997.
With the moral certitude of an economist he has poured criticism on the
economic policies of many countries, including France and Japan. However,
he has directed his most forceful ire towards his homeland.
Krugman has become a trenchant critic of the economic policies of the
Bush Administration. These criticisms are collected in The Great Unraveling
(2003). He describes how bullishness was replaced by bearishness and how
the world of the corporate hero was replaced by the world of corporate sleaze,
caused by Enron and other scandal-hit firms. He lays the blame for this
change at the door of George W. Bush: “First, use cooked numbers to justify
big giveaways to the top. Then if things don’t work out, let ordinary workers
who trusted you pay the price.”
Along with Alan Greenspan, he is the most influential economist in the
U.S. today. He shows that the pen is still mightier than a lot of offensive hard-
ware. Yet these economists owe their power to the media that convey their
message. Krugman hardly ever strays far from his academic base in Prince-
ton. He does not run a consultancy either.
He is in favor of globalization as it is potentially beneficial to the whole
world. He brands much of the criticism directed against it as self-righteous
“globaloney.” He castigates those who still believe protectionism has a role
to play in modern economics. In spite of his belief in a new world order in
trade, he is skeptical of the impact of technology on modern life, seeing some
of the comments as little more than hype. The new global economy has not
made traditional economic theory redundant, he says. He is also dismissive
of supply-siders who believe tax cuts, especially those based on fuzzy math,
are the answer to everything. This is a “crank doctrine” appealing to the preju-

104 The Thinkers 50
dices of rich men and women that offers “self-esteem to the intellectually inse-
cure.” Monopolistic competition and “crony capitalism” are also targets.
He believes in the intellectual purity of economics as a discipline. All too
often, economics attracts charlatans and latter-day snake-oil salesmen, he
says. Economics may not be rocket science, but it is still a science, though
maybe not a dismal one.
Essential reading
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/pkrugman/
Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished
Expectations (WW Norton, 1994)
The Age of Diminished Expectations: U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990s (MIT
Press, 1994)
The Return of Depression Economics (WW Norton, 1999)
The Great Unraveling: From Boom to Bust in Three Scandalous Years (WW
Norton, 2003)

COSTAS MARKIDES
Constantinos C. Markides is Robert P. Bauman Professor of Strategic

Leadership at London Business School. Born in Cyprus in 1960, he studied
economics at Boston University, earning a masters degree. He subsequently
received an M.B.A. and D.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Markides has made a number of contributions to strategic management
thinking. In “To Diversify Or Not To Diversify?” (a 1997 Harvard Business
Review article) he discussed some key questions tied to business diversifica-
tion. Should companies diversify? What does that mean? Should a company
move fast or slow in its diversification? To address such questions, he pointed
to a number of success stories, including the Canadian company Bombardier,
which started out during World War II as a producer of vehicles for snow-
covered terrain. By the 1990s, it was one of the world’s biggest manufacturers
of buses and watercraft. Markides illustrates how Bombardier’s successful
diversification was a slow and cautious affair. It might also be argued that it
wasn’t really diversification at all, just a stretching of their initial emphasis on
specialized transport vehicles. For Bombardier the rewards for its diversifica-
tion were considerable, but such rewards do not come to everyone, especially
if they make the wrong investment calls, says Markides.
As a specialist in strategy and someone with Greek roots, Markides is
aware that strategy comes from the Greek verb “to lead.” Strategy, therefore,
involves dynamism and movement. In All the Right Moves (1999) he proffers
the view that successful business strategy should focus on asking (and finding
the answers to) three fundamental questions:

106 The Thinkers 50
• Who should I target as customers?

• What products or services should I offer them?
• How can I do this in an efficient way?
But finding a successful strategy is also about creativity. Business leaders

should consider stretching their strategic muscles by asking questions from
off beat or unorthodox angles. Perhaps the poorest way to manage strate-
gic decision-making, he argues, is the classic corporate mode of producing
mountains of data and analyzing it ad infinitum hoping that salient answers to
the key questions will somehow evolve. Markides also cautions that a success-
ful strategy is volatile and often has a short shelf life. Just because a strategy
worked for your company yesterday doesn’t mean it will work tomorrow.
Thus, leaders must know the right strategy moves but just as importantly
know how to deploy a strategy creatively. It is also important to know when
to break the rules of the game.
In Fast Second (co-authored with Paul Geroski in 2004), Markides uses the
metaphor of a landscape to describe the business world. There are new areas
to be explored. This is done by people and organizations he terms “colonists.”
These are the firms that routinely take risks, face dangers and uncertainties,
and often have to come up with new and innovative approaches to survival.
In business terms, these are the people who make breakthroughs in any area
– whether technology, pharmaceuticals, or even service providers. But colo-
nists are generally hopeless at bringing the fruits of their efforts to market.
For marketplace success, bigger organizations with a different mindset
are needed. These are the “consolidators.” They scale up the breakthroughs
of the colonists and make them fit for consumers to consume. The two kinds
of businesses are like different species; rare, if not unknown, is the organiza-
tion that can do both. The colonists are good at being colonists, not at being
consolidators. And vice versa.
But this paradigm isn’t appreciated. Many consolidator organizations
enviously eye the colonists with their efficiencies and their zest for success.
They sometimes attempt to become more entrepreneurial, or they set up
incubators, or they announce that they are “going back to the garage.” Such
attempts, Markides believes, are futile. Such attempts reveal, minimally, a

Costas Markides 107
sense of corporate arrogance – maybe even corporate hubris. Consolidators

should realize their advantages and be content to capitalize on them. One
of these is a first-in-the-market advantage, allied to but separate from first-
mover advantage. Colonists are the best first movers, but they’re unable to
make much market success. Ultimately, large-scale success belongs to the
organization that can bring an idea to the market in a big way. Consolidators
should be more than happy to be fast seconds because they are emulating the
likes of corporate brethren such as Microsoft and Canon.
Essential reading
http://forum.london.edu/lbsbiogs.nsf/(httpBiographiesBySurnameSearch)/
markides
Diversification, Refocusing, and Economic Performance (MIT Press, 1996)
“To Diversify or Not to Diversify?” Harvard Business Review, November–
December 1997, pp. 93–99
All the Right Moves: A Guide to Crafting Breakthrough Strategy (Harvard Busi-
ness School Press, 1999)
Fast Second: How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and
Dominate New Markets (Jossey-Bass, 2004) (with Paul A. Geroski)

HENRY MINTZBERG
Henry Mintzberg (born 1939) is a management strategist “in spite of him-

self.” He is Cleghorne Professor of Management Studies at McGill University
in Canada and is also a faculty member of France’s prestigious INSEAD.
His involvement with B-schools is somewhat paradoxical, given his strident
attacks on their training methods, structure, and (as he would see it) preten-
sions.
He studied mechanical engineering at Toronto’s McGill University before
earning his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School
of Management. He has written 15 books and many articles and papers.
Mintzberg first came to a wider public with his book The Nature of Man-
agerial Work (1973), based on his doctoral research. He asked 25 senior
executives to keep diaries noting their work. He also interviewed them con-
tinually. Mintzberg honed in on a big discrepancy. The managers told him
their activities were governed by traditional management tasks like planning,
organizing, commanding, co-ordinating, and controlling, yet their diaries
revealed no such commitment to theories. Most decisions were made off the
cuff in an almost instinctive way. When it came to information, they placed
most credence in what they had just heard.
In Structures in Fives (1983) he wrote that formal barriers and functional
frontiers should be abolished. Hierarchies were outdated. The best way to get
things done was through informal, amorphous teams. These would change
their membership frequently and would even change their terms of reference

Henry Mintzberg 109
as old problems declined in importance and new ones emerged. This “blobby”
environment he termed an “adhocracy” to distinguish it from a bureaucracy.
All this undermines the need for rigid strategy. Never a shrinking violet,
Mintzberg pronounced its present death in The Rise and Fall of Strategic Plan-
ning (2000). It is bound to fail, as it is a unity of opposites: strategy is about
synthesis, planning about analysis. Strategy has often destroyed commit-
ment and distorted vision. There is still a need, though, for informal learning
and the harnessing of personal vision.
Mintzberg has been critical of management education, especially M.B.A.
programs: “M.B.A. schools train the wrong people in the wrong way for the
wrong reasons.” His attitude towards those holding the precious three-letter
suffix is stark. He once said that they should carry a tattooed skull-and-cross-
bones on their foreheads, above the legend “Not prepared to manage.” His
criticisms are contained in Managers Not MBAs (2004): “You cannot learn
to lead an organization from a classroom.” Leadership and management are
not separate. His criticism embraces some of the goliaths of international
management education. They want to turn management into a science or a
profession, forgetting about its emotional and often less rational aspects. He
sees management as a craft: “It’s as much about doing in order to think, as
about thinking in order to do.”
B-schools teach business functions, not management. They inculcate
a narrow-minded and mercenary outlook, combined with a lack of social
awareness. Their products are usually groomed to look on their employees as
resources instead of people. He is also highly critical of much management
consultancy. Traditional M.B.A. graduates are like a virus, destroying man-
agement practice from the inside, and at the same time blinding companies
to other types of management and alternative ways of training managers.
Rather than throw fireballs from the sidelines Mintzberg developed his
own programs at McGill such as the International Masters in Practicing
Management (IMPM), designed for those who already know something of
management in the world’s top companies.
Companies have been suborned to the interests of large shareholders,
which causes widespread corporate social irresponsibility. Mintzberg also
believes that many of the corporate social responsibility initiatives are window

110 The Thinkers 50
dressing. Any attempt to be more socially responsive or ethical is inevitably

stymied by a need for the company’s stock to perform well.
He is not reticent about directing his spleen at specific industries, like the
world’s airlines. These are mercilessly pilloried in Why I Hate Flying (2001)
– he does not mind flying: it is airlines and airports he hates. They say they are
motivated by the highest standards of management and promise comfort. In
practice, air travel is an ordeal, whether for those in “sardine” or “pampered”
class. However, he argues much of this is planned. Customer loyalty and fre-
quent-flyer schemes are often scams, in which travelers are bribed with their
own money.
Essential reading
http://www.henrymintzberg.com/
The Nature of Managerial Work (Harper & Row, 1973)
Structures in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations (Prentice Hall, 1983)
The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (Free Press, 1994)
Why I Hate Flying: Tales for the Tormented Traveler (Thompson, 2001)
Managers Not MBAs (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2004)

GEOFFREY MOORE
Geoff Moore brought marketing into the cyber age although his first call-
ing was English literature. He earned his primary degree from Stanford
and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington. He taught for a while as
a professor at Olivet College, Michigan, but he subsequently undertook a
major career revision, entering the world of marketing high-technology prod-
ucts. He eventually became a partner in the marketing strategy firm Regis
McKenna Inc. He then established his own marketing consultancy, Chasm
Group (named after his first book). He is also a partner in the California
venture capital firm Mohr Davidow.
His experience in marketing high-tech products had taught him that tra-
ditional marketing procedures were increasingly inapplicable. He identified a
technology adaptation life cycle (TALC). A new piece of hardware or software
may be truly revolutionary in what it can do. Its promise is recognized and
taken up by technologically savvy customers who do not need spoon-feeding
on how to use it. However, once this relatively small market has been satisfied,
sales go into a hole. Mainstream buyers simply don’t want to know about the
product: they are unsure about it. They may see it as just too fancy and com-
plicated. Some of this springs from inertia and a fear of the new. Moore also
recognizes a quite rational worry about congruence and compatibility issues.
There are hardcore technophobes as well, some still inhabiting caves.
In Crossing the Chasm (1991) Moore sought to show technology companies
how they could make it to the other side of the chasm. The compatibility
issues could be addressed by developers producing fully integrated products
and suites. He advises informed caution, however; technology companies

112 The Thinkers 50
should do their homework. They should identify key segments in their target
markets and work assiduously towards acceptance. Much of Moore’s theory
is based on the Social Proof in Influence paradigm. This teaches that a new
technology (or anything new) is adopted first by pragmatic people and organ-
izations. Their example is then copied by other pragmatists. It is important
to get these people, the early majority, on board as customers. As pragma-
tists they want solutions, the easier to apply, the better. Then there is the late
majority – the people who wait. They are unsure of the world around them
and hold out until new technology standards have been established. After a
fair dose of cutthroat competition has reduced prices, they eventually buy
into the technology.
Inside the Tornado (1995) was written as a sequel for those who had jumped
successfully across the chasm. Moore illustrates how some companies have
coped with success in a mass-market environment. TALC is still an issue:
companies must test how ready their customers are for their technology.
Many of the thought processes that have led to a successful journey over the
chasm may have to be unlearned and set aside.
The Gorilla Game (1998) was a joint effort, written with marketing strate-
gist Tom Kippola and investment analyst Paul Johnson. It aimed to marry
much of the method of Crossing the Chasm to the world of investment in high-
tech companies, at the time the hottest of stocks.
Moore’s most recent book, Living on the Fault Line (2000), is not (in spite of
its title) a memoir of life in the San Francisco area. It is written for the man-
agement of publicly quoted technology companies that have been established
for some time. They have catapulted the chasm, survived the tornado, and
yet are still looking for signposts. They are under attack by new, disruptive
technologies. They know they have to keep up, but they seldom know where
or how to run. The book provides some answers and models to pursue.
Essential reading
http://www.tcg-advisors.com/who/moore.htm
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream
Customers (Collins, 1991, revised 1999)

Geoffrey Moore 113
Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley’s Cutting Edge
(Collins, 1995, revised 2004)
The Gorilla Game: Investor’s Guide to Picking Winners in High Technology
(Collins, 1998) (with Tom Kippola and Paul Johnson)
Living on the Fault Line: Managing for Shareholder Value in the Age of the Inter-
net (Collins, 2000)

KJELL NORDSTRÖM
AND JONAS
RIDDERSTRÅLE
Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle are both professors at the Stock-
holm School of Economics: Nordström at the Institute of International
Business, Ridderstråle at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Leadership.
They both hold doctorates in international business and economics and are
highly respected members of the Swedish academic family. Both consult to
Swedish and international companies and have a broad range of business
interests.
They have achieved fame among the ranks of management thinkers
through their books and their lectures, both of which are different. At their
lectures (they prefer to call them “gigs”) they appear (should that be perform?)
together, dressed in black. The similarities with the world of rock music are
deliberate. Their delivery is fast and punchy. Another flamboyant presenter,
Tom Peters (a big fan), might be described as a modern country-and-western
performer; these guys are definitely hard-core heavy metal artistes.
Their first book, Funky Business (1999), caught the atmosphere of their
gigs. It contained some stark and simple messages. The world of business has
changed dramatically. What will work has to be different in a revolutionary
way:

Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle 115
Traditional roles, jobs, skills, ways of doing things, insights, strategies, aspira-
tions, fears and expectations no longer count … We cannot have business as
usual. We need business as unusual. We need different business. We need
innovative business. We need unpredictable business. We need surprising
business. We need funky business.
The successful organizations will be different, too, unafraid of difference

or creativity: They will seek emotion. The
meaning of e-commerce must be changed
to emotional commerce. Employees should
be hired because they have some of that
emotion. They can then be trained to carry
out specific skills. They should be sought
in unusual ways, even at pop concerts,
far removed from the traditional hiring
venues.
Ideas are what will make a difference. Riches should be sought in niches,
wherever they are, among “homosexual dentists or pigeon-fancying law-
yers.”
The workplace of the future will be Funky Inc. It “isn’t like any other com-
pany … [It] thrives on the changing circumstances and unpredictability
of our times.” The future will be incoherent, dominated by movement and
speed, by the imperatives of “move it, move it fast, move it faster, move it
now.” The strengths of an organization will not be core competencies but
core competents, people whose skills and knowledge make a difference: “These
walking monopolies will stay as long as the company offers them something
they want. When that is no longer the case they will leave.”
Today’s world is a place of excess. This is the age of time and talent, both of
which are commodities. Talent will allow firms to be unique. The challenge
is: How are you making yourself more attractive, more sexy? In a world of
economic Darwinism, survival is a question of being either fit or sexy. Com-
petition takes place using models and moods. Fitness boils down to using
market imperfections to your advantage. Masters of mood exploit the imper-
fections of man by seducing or sedating the consumer. Excellent companies
reinvent innovation.

116 The Thinkers 50
Their second book, Karaoke Capitalism (2004), was never going to be a

dog-eared sequel to their earlier volume, a mere “Funky 2.” The two Swedes
attempted to address political and ideological issues and to ask what changes
we can expect to emerge from a world dominated by super-fast and soulless
machines. In places the book reads like a manifesto, a call to the barricades.
The world is undergoing change on a scale unknown before, greater than the
move from an agricultural to an industrial society that took place in Europe
200 years ago. That took well over a century and was accompanied by major
changes in behavior and religious observance as well as political changes.
Individuals now have more choice than ever. The world of Karaoke Capital-
ism is increasingly dominated by copycats bashing out cover versions of great
originals. Only imagination, innovation, and originality will place societies,
organizations, and individuals center stage. The book talks about how to
create capitalism with character and how to live a fulfilling life while making
a living. To develop the character of capitalism involves accepting individual
responsibility: “Look inside. Do you want to be a first-rate version of yourself
or a second-rate version of someone else?”
Both books are written in an uncompromising style. Sometimes they
deliberately aim below the belt and between the eyes.
Essential reading
http://www.funkybusiness.com
http://www.karaokecapitalism.com
Funky Business (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 1999)
Karaoke Capitalism: Managing for Mankind (Praeger, 2004)

KENICHI OHMAE
Kenichi Ohmae (born 1943) studied at Waseda University before going

to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he gained a Ph.D. in
nuclear engineering. On returning to Japan, he worked initially on the imple-
mentation of the country’s nuclear power program, before joining McKinsey
& Company. He has wide-ranging interests in a host of issues, from the world
economy to the problems besetting Japan. He founded a political movement
and stood unsuccessfully for the governorship of Tokyo. He has written a vast
number of books and papers and is dean of two business schools in Tokyo in
which he also teaches. He has taught at Stanford as well as on an innovative
e-learning M.B.A. taught by Bond University in Australia. He has numerous
businesses in Japan, including a television channel, Business Breakthrough
TV.
Strategy, for Ohmae, has always had a lot to do with intuition. It helps
those who use it wisely to see clearly. In The Mind of the Strategist (1982) he
explained the reasons behind the success of some Japanese companies.
Ohmae was aware that the world was changing. Improvements in telecom-
munications were shrinking distances and creating new possibilities. In Triad
Power (1985) he identified three concentrations of wealth in the world. Com-
panies had to compete globally if they were to succeed. This meant entering
all triad markets simultaneously.
Ohmae viewed the persistence of national borders as a restriction on the
flow of goods and information. Borders exist to buttress the outdated concept
of the nation-state. They have been stripped of much of their power by the rise

118 The Thinkers 50
of the Internet. The future lies in groupings of nations coming together for
economic reasons, like the European Union.
In The Invisible Continent (2000) Ohmae continues his exploration of suc-
cess in the new global economy. The companies that will succeed owe much
to pursuing the right strategy, but this is often informed by intuition. These
companies have something equivalent to a genetic fingerprint for global suc-
cess. He terms them “Godzilla” companies.
In The Next Global Stage (2005) he reassesses the
global economy that has been created by improved
telecommunications. He eschews the term “new
economy”: it has been degraded by association with
a narrow concentration on growth and productivity
during the dot.com era. It was based on new trading
concepts such as the greater use of multiples in assess-
ing companies’ worth. The world was in a state of
super-liquidity. The key to tapping into that liquidity
was to attract it. The lodestone of attraction was no
longer the nation-state but the investor-friendly region. There was no need
for a region to be based on any pre-existing geographical unit. It did not have
to have any natural resources. It should have good technical and intellectual
infrastructure, but it did not need any traditional natural resources to achieve
prosperity. It could be resource-poor in traditional economic terms, but it
could easily overcome this by possessing sufficient knowledge workers. It did
not matter how poor it was: the secret to prosperity was to attract wealth from
the ROW (Rest of the World). This then led to specialization. An example of
a once poor region that successfully attracted inward investment is Ireland. It
had realized quite early that wealth in the Information Age came at the end
of a telephone line.
Another aspect of the global economy is the existence of platforms. These
are agreed-upon technical standards enabling easy communication. They
range from the communications platform of the English language, whose use
has become predominant in the business world, to IT standards such as the
Internet protocol. The U.S. dollar has the status of a monetary platform,
used for transactions and savings by people with no ties or links to the United
States.

Kenichi Ohmae 119
Along with the connectivity provided by telecommunications and compu-

ter science advances, the global economy is facilitated daily by improvements
in logistics. Goods can be assembled and distributed easily by the same com-
pany or through a strategic partnership.
The global economy is a place of shifting sands. Old industries are dying
with amazing speed; new ones are taking their place. But certainties are few.
An industry leader has to accept that it could easily find itself in a leading or
prominent position in a completely different industry. It has to cope with this
loss of orientation.
The greatest dangers in the global economy are old-style paradigms, such
as the nation-state and protectionist mentalities.
Essential reading
http://www.kohmae.com
Triad Power: The Coming Shape of Global Competition (Free Press, 1985)
The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy (Harper
Business, 1990)
The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies (Harper Collins,
1995)
The Invisible Continent: Global Strategy in the New Economy (Harper Business,
2000)
The Next Global Stage: The Challenges and Opportunities in Our Borderless
World (Wharton, 2005)

DON PEPPERS
Don Peppers is a co-founder of Peppers & Rogers, a customer-focused

management consultancy. Peppers is regarded as the father of the customer
relationship management (CRM) phenomenon.
He earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force
Academy and a masters degree in public affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow
Wilson School. He worked for a U.S. regional airline prior to entering the
world of marketing and advertising, becoming CEO of Perkins/Butler Direct
Marketing Inc. He eventually founded Peppers & Rogers with his collabora-
tor and co-author Martha Rogers. The firm, with offices on six continents, is
now part of the Carlson Marketing Group.
To paraphrase George Orwell, customers are equal, but some are more
equal than others. Peppers aims to show through his work on customer rela-
tionship management that some customers are more profitable than others
while some are dead losses. A company can make a lot of money by identify-
ing the former and discarding the latter. Anyone in business lucky enough to
have lots of customers, be they a multinational or mom-and-pop store, will
have their favorite customers as well as those whom they wish would take
their custom elsewhere. This sums up a good deal of Peppers’ management
ideas. Hunches and feelings must be replaced by more scientific methods of
identifying the wheat from the chaff.
For Peppers there are three types of customers:

Don Peppers 121
• Most Valuable Customers (MVCs): These can be shown, mathematically,

to contribute to profit. Each transaction is profitable. Maybe it involves
buying an item or service with a good margin or is a transaction leading
to other transactions. The MVCs keep coming back. They are serial profit
providers. They do not eat into staff time, and they do not tie up resources
with vexatious complaints.
• Most Growable Customers (MGCs): These may be new customers. Some
high-powered computer-aided number crunching can confirm that they
are profitable now or that they are potentially profitable in the not-too-
distant future.
• The “Below-Zeroes”: These customers cost the firm more than they pro-
vide. Either they are low-volume buyers in low-margin areas, or they are
perennially finding fault, holding up staff with trivial complaints, or pos-
sibly sending items back with demands for refunds.
Knowing who falls into the MVC category is useful. Resources can be directed
towards servicing their business and keeping them. There can be positively
discriminated interaction with them. Time and resources can be devoted to
greater customization of the products or services sought by MVCs. Their
queries and complaints can be fast-tracked for speedy resolution. In fact,
with caller identification of telephone numbers, any communication from
them can be responded to quickly and efficiently, instead of their being put
on hold.
Peppers and Rogers extended their analysis from “one-to-one” business–
customer interfaces to B2B (or business-to-business contacts) in One to One
B2B (2001). There was the same tripartite customer profile and a similar need
to keep good customers. Further research found that business MVCs had
things in common, like a stable management team, as well as having shared
corporate values.
As a company gets to know MVCs better, it can anticipate their needs
better and their loyalty can be rewarded. The logic is that the MVCs and
MGCs should be pursued at the expense of the Below-Zero people, who
should be discarded.

122 The Thinkers 50
Essential reading
http://www.1to1.com/View.aspx?BioID=9493
The One to One Future (Currency, 1993) (with Martha Rogers)
One to One B2B: Customer Development Strategies for the Business-to-Business
World (Currency, 2001) (with Martha Rogers)
Life’s a Pitch: How to Outwit Your Competitors and Make a Winning Presenta-
tion (Currency, 2002)
Managing Customer Relationships: A Strategic Framework (Wiley, 2004) (with
Martha Rogers)

TOM PETERS
Tom Peters (born 1942) is a native of Baltimore. He studied engineering

at Cornell before heading to the west coast to get his M.B.A. and Ph.D. at
Stanford. He saw active service in the Vietnam War with the U.S. Navy. In
the mid 1970s he joined McKinsey as a consultant, leaving in 1981 to set up
his own firm, now part of the Tom Peters Group.
In Search of Excellence appeared in 1982 (co-written with Robert Water-
man, a fellow McKinsey partner). This became the best-selling management
book of the twentieth century – the first to reach the best-seller charts. This
was soon followed by the nearly-as-successful A Passion for Excellence (1985).
Excellence has achieved a cult following. It tied in with the need in the early
1980s to feel good again about being American. It showed that significant
parts of American industry and business were excellent; others could be too.
Its simplistic rhetoric earned Peters a rap on the knuckles from the venerable
Peter Drucker, who chided Peters for making “managing sound so incred-
ibly easy. All you have to do is put that book under your pillow and it will get
done.”
In Search of Excellence is an American classic. It contains great stories of
do-and-dare about 43 excellent American companies; it is not long on theo-
rizing. It is liberally spiced with nuggets of homespun wisdom: “If a window
of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shade.”
According to the book, excellence in business depends on eight factors:
• Promote people who “do it, fix it [and] try it”

• Learn from the people you serve (the customers)

124 The Thinkers 50
• Encourage entrepreneurship and autonomy

• Take a “hands-on” approach
• Value workers as the key to productivity
• Stick to the knitting, exploit your core competencies
• Keep your organization simple and your staff lean
• Utilize simultaneously loose–tight controls
Peters has always been in favor of delegation in a company. The manager

cannot know everything. If he tries, he will get snowed under in useless
detail.
A Darwinian approach to the achievement of excellence had to be adopted
to achieve excellence. It is better to do something wrong than do nothing:
people should not be terrified of making mistakes. The next time they try,
they’ll learn from it and do it right, or hopefully better. Therefore, excellence
can be gained incrementally, through a series of small steps bonded by a cen-
tral message.
Peters is not a captive to consistency. A lot of the excellent companies
praised by him in Excellence have not stood the test of corporate time. Some
have disappeared. In today’s world of shifting industry boundaries, the notion
of telling a company to stick to its knitting seems akin to an order for corpo-
rate suicide. However, Peters doesn’t mind changing his tune. He believes
now that there are no excellent companies. He has modified the message. It
is no longer enough to be excellent: companies have to stand out from the
crowd. Companies have to shrink, even deconstruct. They have to innovate.
They must make the workplace more interesting.
Old structures are redundant. They are obstructing progress. In Liberation
Management (1992) Peters pronounced the death of middle management
with the sentence: “…[M]iddle managers as we have known them are cooked
geese.” The individual employee increasingly has to brand himself or herself.
He prophesies an increasing number of women workers and welcomes this:
Women are better than men at working in teams.
He believes that “90 percent of white-collar jobs will be totally reinvented/
reconceived in the next decade.” His interest in crafting the new corporate
citizen led to the production of a series of books including The Brand You 50
(1999) and Project 50 (1999).

Tom Peters 125
Peters is a consummate performer, injecting the same messianism into his

public appearances as is found in his books. A lecture by Tom Peters is a per-
formance, a spectacle even. He is never static. Someone (at an obvious loose
end) once calculated that he walks seven miles on stage while giving a lecture.
He gives about 100 talks a year throughout the world. He jokes that that’s
why he called his first horse “Frequent Flyer.”
Tom Peters and Robert Waterman were also instrumental in the develop-
ment of the 7-S method of isolating management strengths and weaknesses,
developed with Richard Pascale and Tony Athos.
Essential reading
http://tompeters.com
In Search of Excellence (Harper & Row, 1982) (with Robert H. Waterman)
A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difference (Warner, 1985) (with
Nancy Austin)
Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution (Knopf, 1987)
Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nine-
ties (Knopf, 1992)
The Brand You 50 (Knopf, 1999)
Re-Imagine (Dorling Kindersley, 2003)

MICHAEL PORTER
Michael E. Porter (born 1947) is the Bishop William Laurence University

Professor at the Harvard Business School. He has an almost “living legend”
status in the world of management thinking. He has written 18 books and
countless articles. In addition to his teaching, he consults widely with the
Monitor Group which he helped establish. Above all he is an educator, either
by the spoken or by the written word; however, he is not a performer or man-
agement superstar. The Economist once commented that he was not likely to
write a best-selling management blockbuster. His books are “heavy,” which
probably explains why few of them are available in paperback. He has advised
both the public and private sectors throughout the world. Not only has he
been showered with academic and business awards, he has even received civic
medals usually reserved for military heroes or extraordinary sports people.
Porter was for many years active in the U.S. military’s reserve and was a cel-
ebrated college footballer, baseballer, and golfer in his youth.
Porter was born in a university town, Ann Arbor, Michigan. His father
was an army officer. Porter studied mechanical and aerospace engineering at
Princeton and then switched to business, earning an M.B.A. and a Ph.D. in
economics from Harvard. He later joined the faculty there.
Porter has always been obsessed by competition. His first widely read
book Competitive Strategy (1980) is now in its 63rd imprint. In it he analyzes
competition. There is:
• Natural competition and tension between existing players in an industry

• The threat of new entrants to the market

Michael Porter 127
• The prospect of substitute products or services

• The bargaining power of suppliers
• The bargaining power of consumers
There are three ways to compete effectively:
• Produce a product or service more cheaply

• Produce something that is better and different from the competition,
defining this as “differentiation”
• Dominate a niche market and close out the competitors
Porter did not believe many companies could do all three or even two at a
time. The particular strategy chosen depended on what type of company you
had. He noted five types:
• Global
• Fragmented
• Emerging
• Mature
• Declining
The company also had to look at the series of links that went into its provision
or production. He called this the value chain (and the name has stuck). He
isolated five primary activities in any value chain:
• Internal logistics: getting the necessary materials

• Production or provision
• External logistics and distribution
• Marketing
• After-sales services
These were each accompanied by a range of secondary activities: each compa-

ny’s value chain in turn fitted into a wider value system.
Porter subsequently moved from competition between firms to compe-
tition between nations. In The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990) he
examined why some states were wealthy and others were not. The important

128 The Thinkers 50
element here was national value systems. He visualized these as akin to a

four-sided diamond. The four components were:
• Domestic rivalry: the tougher, the better

• Traditional economic resources
• Infrastructure, including the education level of its citizens
• The cluster phenomenon
The last point is very important, though frequently overlooked. These are
concentrations of particular types of industry in defined geographical areas,
such as low-tech Portuguese cork-makers and Silicon Valley. These areas can
use economies of scale to attract workers and increase efficiency, as well as
cross-subsidization and skills pools.
His study of national economies has been extensive, though not always
welcome. In Can Japan Compete? (2000) he showed that the long and pro-
tracted recession suffered by Japan was the inevitable result of successive
post-war Japanese governments’ policies.
His most recent research on competition has involved a look at America’s
inner cities. He argues that wealth creation is a more sound panacea for pov-
erty and inequality reduction than redistributing wealth from elsewhere.
Porter has academically colonized much of the east coast of the United
States with various centers supplied with full-time research staff working on
a plethora of projects dear to his academic heart, from competition to inner-
city development.
Essential reading
http://dor.hbs.edu/fi _redirect.jhtml?facInfo=bio&facEmId=mporter&loc
=extn
Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors (Free
Press, 1980)
Comparative Advantage (Free Press, 1985)
The Competitive Advantage of Nations (Free Press, 1990)
Can Japan Compete? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000)

C. K. PRAHALAD
Coimbatore Krishnao Prahalad was born in 1941 in the town of Coimbatore

in Tamil Nadu, India. He studied physics at the University of Madras (now
Chenai), followed by work as a manager in a branch of the Union Carbide
battery company, where he gained experience in management. He continued
his education in the U.S., earning a Ph.D. from Harvard. He taught both
in India and in America, eventually joining the faculty of the University of
Michigan’s Business School, where he holds the Harvey C. Fruehauf Chair
of Business Administration.
At Ann Arbor he met Gary Hamel, then a young international business
student. Their collaboration ultimately resulted in Competing for the Future
(1995). This book described how the status quo in management was in tran-
sition. It was moving from the old control-and-command model toward one
where managers had to find new market opportunities. Much depended on
markets and the delivery of customer satisfaction. This was in contrast to the
concept of business process reengineering, which told companies to look for
core competencies.
In his most recent book, The Future of Competition (2004), written with
Venkat Ramaswamy, Prahalad argues that companies have not made enough
use of the opportunities provided by globalization. There is an inability to
realize that not only have the rules of the game changed but the role of the
players has been transformed too. The customer is a more powerful and
proactive figure, no longer an abstraction that has to be satisfied. Thanks to
the Internet, customers are agents creating and participating in transactions.
The concept of value has also changed. It is not inherent in products or serv-

130 The Thinkers 50
ices. It cannot be instilled by producers or providers. It has to be co-created

with consumers. They build value by experiencing it. The only way companies
can compete successfully is through building new strategic capital.
Prahalad desired a more hands-on approach to business. In 1997 he co-
founded Praja (Sanskrit for “common people”) in San Diego. This Internet
start-up wanted to pull the Internet away from information-based content
towards something more experiential. The
company’s fortunes were badly hit by the
puncturing of the tech bubble. Prahalad
commented philosophically that this expe-
rience had taught him a lot.
Prahalad maintains a deep interest in the
world’s poor. This led him to write The For-
tune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (2004). It
stemmed from a “long and lonely journey”
to find a solution to the world’s poverty. He
identified the world’s poor (the bottom of the
pyramid, or BOP) as a potential untapped
market for companies, worth anything up
to $13 trillion a year: “The real source of
market promise is not the wealthy few in the developing world, or even the
emerging middle-income consumers. It is the billions of aspiring poor who
are joining the market economy for the first time.”
A market at the bottom of the pyramid could be co-created by multina-
tional and domestic industry, non-governmental organizations, and – most
importantly – the poor themselves. They would then have choice over their
lives and the products they used. Prahalad pointed to Hindustan Lever’s
success in marketing soap-powder and detergents in smaller, cheaper units.
This created prosperity downstream through new distribution mechanisms.
The book is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing interviews with people
whose lives have been improved. Prahalad’s interest has nothing to do with
philanthropy. He says that too often poor people are patronized by aid agen-
cies. He wants them to have real power in the marketplace.
His book also highlights the victimization of the poor in some areas. In
India there persists a “poverty penalty,” where poor Indian families are forced

C. K. Prahalad 131
into the arms of money-lenders charging interest rates in excess of 400 per-
cent.
Essential reading
http://www.thenextpractice.com/who_we_are/ck_prahalad_founding_
partner_ceo.php
Competing for the Future (Harvard Business School Press, 1995) (with Gary
Hamel)
The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers (Har-
vard Business School Press, 2004) (with Venkat Ramaswamy)
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits
(Wharton, 2004)

EDGAR H. SCHEIN
Edgar Schein (born 1928) is Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeri-

tus and former Professor of Organization Psychology and Management at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). Although he has now
retired, he still teaches there part-time.
He studied psychology at the University of Chicago and received a doctor-
ate in social psychology from Harvard.
He saw active service as a captain in the U.S. Army in Korea, experience
that proved seminal for much of his later work. Afterward he joined the fac-
ulty of the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. and has never left.
Schein became interested in brainwashing. He observed its effects on
American prisoners of war in Korea. He also saw parallels with the training
provided by companies like GE and IBM in their in-house training facilities.
Employees were taught to identify totally with the company and its aims.
What was happening in GE or IBM was the indoctrination of a culture.
He has also been interested in the behavior of groups. He is considered to
be the first to coin the term “corporate culture.” He defined this in Organi-
zational Culture and Leadership (1985) as “… a pattern of basic assumptions
– invented, discovered or developed by a group as it learns to cope with its
problems of external adaptation and internal integration [and that is] consid-
ered valid and [is] taught to new members as the correct way …”
These basic assumptions are based on:
• Humanity’s relationship to nature: do we control it, or does it control us?

• What is truth: does it emerge through debate and experiment, or are truth
and reality imposed from above?

Edgar H. Schein 133
• What is human nature: is it manipulative, trying to get the biggest output

from the smallest input? Or is it striving for bigger ideals?
• Why do we do what we do: in the Western world, achievement and fin-
ishing the task are important, but other cultures have different attitudes
toward work.
• How do we deal with other humans: is interaction a good thing? Does our
organization encourage or discourage it?
These dimensions, like culture, are dynamic – in a constant state of develop-

ment and adaptation.
A culture can be created by a corporate founding father and may be main-
tained by his descendants. A forceful CEO can have a similar impact. This
type of culture is usually tied closely to these individuals’ values.
Culture changes as the organization changes. There are roughly three
stages in the organization’s development: (1) birth and early growth, (2)
organizational midlife, and (3) organizational maturity.
Management has a subset of cultures. There are three that Schein identifies
as central to organizational learning, which must always be kept in balance:
• The operator culture: “an internal culture based on operational success”

• The engineering culture: maintained by those “who drive the organiza-
tion’s core competencies”
• The executive culture: maintained by the organization’s top echelons
Schein is also known for his writings about careers in organizations, espe-
cially for coining the term psychological contract. This contract is based on
the unspoken assumption that managerial employees would work hard
and conscientiously. They would be loyal to the organization and obedient
to those in higher positions. In return they would receive lifetime employ-
ment. This psychological contract produced the company man; there were
few women. Originality and creativity were unwelcome extras. The organiza-
tion had a quasi-military structure. It was accepted because, in its heyday of
the 1950s and 1960s, people remembered the hardships and uncertainties of
the Depression years. They had also experienced real military discipline in
World War II or (like Schein) in Korea. In return, managers gained a predict-

134 The Thinkers 50
able and respectable lifestyle. The psychological contract was a white-collar

phenomenon, and it did not apply to the blue-collar ranks.
The psychological contract increasingly belongs to history. Companies
want bright and creative people who, they hope, will also be fairly loyal and
hard working. Potential managers no longer see as desirable the predictabil-
ity of lifelong employment in the same firm. They want to take nectar from a
whole range of different flowers. Getting managers to stay is now the issue:
coercive persuasion is no longer an option.
Essential reading
http://web.mit.edu/scheine/www/bio.html
Career Dynamics: Watching Individual and Organizational Needs (Addison
Wesley, 1978)
Organizational Culture (Jossey-Bass, 1980)
Organizational Culture and Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 1985)
The Corporate Culture Survival Guide (Jossey-Bass, 1999)

RICARDO SEMLER
Ricardo Semler (born 1959) is the largest shareholder and “non CEO” of
the Brazilian manufacturer Semco. Ricardo’s father, an Austrian engineer,
founded the company, based in Sao Paulo, in 1954. It originally made marine
pumps but has expanded in all directions including real estate, retail, and
information technology.
His father gave Ricardo control of the company in 1980. At first he ran
the firm in a fairly traditional way. However, poor health brought on by high
stress, combined with a lack of motivation by staff, persuaded him to intro-
duce some radical changes.
Conventional wisdom might have suggested pursuing efficiencies through
cost cutting, maybe closing down altogether, but Semler threw away the
management rulebook.
He is fond of quoting a parable about three medieval stonecutters who were
asked to provide job descriptions: The first said that he cut stones; the second
that he carved stones into intricate designs; the third answered that he built
cathedrals. Semler has tried to promote the “cathedral builders” on his staff
by giving them real responsibility and instituting on-the-job democracy.
Management should trust its workforce, so security checks on employees
were dispensed with early on. A system of factory committees was estab-
lished that decide everything from catering issues to product lines. Semler
found at the beginning that trust was a two-way process. Employees, long
used to taking orders and keeping their mouths closed, were afraid that the
changes were ephemeral, and that they might be punished for speaking their

136 The Thinkers 50
minds. Semler assured them that no one would be fired, and so the reforms
took hold.
Management has taken a back seat. The culture of oppression was first
abolished. Management lost titles, offices, secretaries, even designated desks
from which they could work. Semco workers can set production targets
themselves. They are encouraged to continually ask “Why?” Work is no
longer dominated by a single transaction – sale of labor in return for wages.
Instead, it is a creative environment in which workers set their own goals
and are responsible for their attainment. Anyone who wishes can belong to
a union, and strikes sometimes occur. A new relationship has been fostered
between workers and management. Supervisors are chosen by the people
whom they manage.
Semler sees his approach as having little to do with management theory. It
is an application of sociology and anthropology to the workplace. Many saw it
as a recipe for chaos and predicted its imminent demise. Semco’s results have
proven otherwise. Profits went from a respectable $32 million when Ricardo
took over to $160 million in 2002. Employment went from 90 to over 3,000
in the same period.
Semler does not believe in growth as a goal. Companies should grow to
offset things like inflation. It should be like Semco’s growth: organic, not
forced.
Commentators who used to say “it will end in tears” increasingly say “it
could never happen anywhere else.” Semco has entered into partnerships
with companies throughout the world and has taken over others.
Semco remains a private company. That way Semler and his fellow think-
ers keep control of its agenda. Were it to go public, it would mean transferring
power to analysts and institutional investors who would not have the interests
of his staff at heart.
His workers have established several successful spin-offs on their own
initiative. Semler insists that he is no longer in charge – he is “gainfully unem-
ployed” since the company seems to run itself.
Semler’s views on work are unorthodox. He says there is too big a contrast
between work and leisure and that the opposite of work is not leisure, but
idleness. Free time is often a time of creativity, listening, and responding to
instincts.

Ricardo Semler 137
Semler has given lectures and talks all over the world, often to leading
businessmen. He does not think much of traditional business education,
saying it is overly cerebral, with no place for emotions. He has applied his
educational thinking outside the company, setting up a school with the same
participative spirit as that of Semco.
Essential reading
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/06/29/semler.profile/
Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace
(Warner, 1994)
The Seven-Day Weekend: Feeding Ducks and Making Millions (Portfolio,
2003)

PETER SENGE
Peter Senge (born 1947) is the director of the Center for Organizational
Learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and chair-
person of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL). He studied
engineering at Stanford. After graduation he went to M.I.T. to complete
his doctoral studies. In addition to his teaching and writing, Senge consults.
He was a founding partner of Innovation Associates, now part of Arthur D.
Little.
Senge popularized the notion of the learning organization in his book The
Fifth Discipline (1990), though the term was first used by Chris Argyris over a
decade earlier. Senge sums up the learning organization as “a group of people
who are continually enhancing their capability to create their future.” It is the
best way for a company to come to terms with a rapidly changing world. It
involves an approach to learning going far deeper than the simple once-and-
for-all digestion of information. Learning is “about changing individuals so
that they produce results they care about, accomplish things that are impor-
tant to them.”
The learning organization for Senge is characterized by a number of ele-
ments:
• Personal mastery and self-discipline

• Continual challenging of stereotypes on all levels
• Shared vision
• Team learning
• Shared purpose

Peter Senge 139
• Alignment
• Systemic thinking
Every organization has, among its members, vast potential for learning.
This has to be harnessed at every level. Managers have to change from being
overseers to being agents and inciters of change. They must learn how their
companies work and suggest how they might work better. Everyone must
communicate without fear. Learning comes through dialogue and discus-
sion, but the two are not the same: discussion is always more focused. This
produces information that causes action, resulting in a new pool of informa-
tion. Therefore, learning has an effect not unlike throwing a pebble in a pond.
Learning is about understanding the linkages between sometimes quite dis-
parate things.
“As the world becomes more interconnected and business becomes more
complex and dynamic, work must become more learningful,” according to
Senge. People have to be encouraged to experiment. Learning occurs through
mistakes.
In spite of the book’s popularity, Senge was disappointed with companies’
responses. They either paid no more than lip service to it or turned their
backs on his learning strategies altogether. Many corporations were mistake-
averse, often punishing those making mistakes even when the errors were
relatively harmless.
He realized that one of the most change-averse elements within an organi-
zation is its culture. It can often survive downsizing or reengineering with
remarkable tenacity but new forms of learning cannot go far in the face of
cultural hostility. In The Dance of Change (1999) Senge reflected on these fail-
ures, arguing that understanding of the factors that are obstructing change
is needed first. Senge isolated three elements that promote change. He also
found ten reasons for doing nothing or for moving backwards. He hints that
the forces of inertia within an organization may be so great that they frustrate
even the most driven CEO. But some of the obstacles can be redrawn to help
develop a learning organization. For example, an excuse for not adopting a
change initiative is often “lack of time.” If this is taken sincerely, it can be an
opportunity to reframe the use of time within the organization as a whole.
As in The Fifth Discipline, Senge offers practical advice and strategies for over-
coming these obstacles.

140 The Thinkers 50
His latest book, Presence (2005), is based on hundreds of interviews with

businessmen, academics, and scientists on the nature of change and their ways
of dealing with it. It presents a radically new approach to learning. Senge and
his co-authors point to new ways of seeing and sensing.
Senge is dismissive of much of management thinking and writing. Anyone
seeking insight into business management is like one of the explorers during
the great ages of discovery, he says. They have an idea of where they want to
go, but they have inadequate maps for the journey, with only a collection of
very uneven and contradictory notes from earlier voyagers – the equivalents
of most recent writing on management. He believes that these should not be
dismissed out of hand, however; they are better than nothing and may con-
tain kernels of reliability.
Essential reading
http://www.solonline.org/aboutsol/who/Senge/
The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Cur-
rency, 1990)
The Dance of Change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in Learning
Organizations (Currency, 1999)
Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society
(Currency, 2005) (with C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworuki and Betty
Sue Flowers)

THOMAS A.
STEWART
Thomas A. Stewart is the founder of the concepts of knowledge management

and intellectual capital exploitation.
He graduated with a major in English literature from Harvard in 1970 and
then pursued a career in the publishing world. He was president of Atheneum
Publishing before leaving to become a journalist. He joined the editorial
board of Fortune, contributing many pieces on a variety of topics. He is best
known as the author of “The Leading Edge” column, read by almost a million
people.
Stewart is versatile; he has shown himself ready to write on almost any
topic. The topic for which he is most famous is knowledge.
There was a time, not so long ago, when terms like intellectual capital and
the knowledge economy were practically unknown. Anyone who had read
Peter Drucker’s Age of Discontinuity (1969) closely was aware of the concept
of the knowledge worker, but for many people these were unfamiliar terms.
However, the advent of the Information Age changed many doubters into
believers. The book that described what was going on was Stewart’s Intellec-
tual Capital (1997). He argued that a fundamental shift in productive forces
was taking place as great as that of the Industrial Revolution. Firms would no
longer be able to rely on traditional bricks-and-mortar notions of capital, like
equipment and land; the new and very powerful forms of capital were knowl-
edge and skills or intellectual capital. It had “become the one indispensable
asset of corporations.”

142 The Thinkers 50
Intellectual capital was more than the collective brainpower of an organi-

zation; it was brainpower harnessed and applied toward specific ends:
“Organizational intellect becomes intellectual capital only when it can be
deployed to do something that could not be done if it remained scattered
around like so many coins in a gutter.” It is “useful knowledge packed for
others.”
In Stewart’s thinking there are three varieties:
• Human capital: implicit knowledge

• Customer capital: the value of relationships between customer and com-
pany
• Structural capital: “… knowledge that doesn’t go home at night” including
processes and systems – the information that an organization acquires
over a business lifetime
The rise of intellectual capital has important implications for all in an organi-
zation. It gives those with the new knowledge a whole host of career choices:
• Careers can no longer be seen as a series of steps up the corporate pyra-

mid
• Project management is the furnace in which successful careers are forged
• Power will flow from expertise, not position
• Most roles in the knowledge-based organization can be performed equally
well by outsiders as by insiders
• Careers are made in markets
• Career choices are not made between companies, but between specializa-
tion and generalization
• Intellectual capital is a source of wealth both for companies and for indi-
viduals; it is held in common between the two
Stewart also prophesied the end, or at least the radical transformation, of

management. The knowledge workers are the people who know best how to
apply their skills and know-how, not managers. Their work has to be assessed
by goals attained, not by tasks performed.

Thomas A. Stewart 143
Stewart says that it is up to companies to mine the intellectual skills avail-

able within their organizations through effective knowledge management
systems. Many tried, but were often at a loss to know how to do it; others
paid lip service to the concepts involved. Knowledge management seemed
destined to join the ranks of the Management Idea of the Month. Many felt
that the fault lay partially with Stewart, whose book had been a little short
on hard details. So, in his next book, The Wealth of Knowledge (2003), he
outlined four simple steps companies should take to make the most of their
intellectual capital:
• Identify and evaluate the role of knowledge in the business

• Match the revenues with the knowledge assets that produce them
• Develop a strategy for investing in and exploiting the firm’s intellectual
assets
• Improve the efficiency of knowledge work and knowledge workers
Essential reading
http://members.aol.com/thosstew/bio.html
Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations (Currency, 1997)
The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century
Organization (Currency, 2003)

FONS
TROMPENAARS
AND CHARLES
HAMPDENTURNER
Consultants (2005 Ranking: 25)
Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner are managing directors

of Trompenaars Hampden-Turner Intercultural Management Consultancy
(formerly the Centre for International Business Studies), based in Amster-
dam. They have collaborated for over two decades on detailed research into
cultural differences between markets.
Fons Trompenaars studied economics at the Vrije Universiteit in Amster-
dam. He went on to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of
Finance for his doctorate. He then worked for nine years with Royal Dutch
Shell. In addition to his consultancy work, he is a visiting professor at the
Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
Charles Hampden-Turner studied at the University of Cambridge, gain-
ing his doctorate in the Harvard Business School. He too worked for Royal
Dutch Shell, where he was involved in group planning. He taught for many
years, both in the U.S. and at the London Business School, and is now Senior
Research Associate in International and Strategic Management in the Judge
Institute of Management Studies in Cambridge.
Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner began their research into cultural
nuances among managers in a rigorous and analytical way, sending out 15,000

Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner 145
questionnaires to managers in 28 countries. They extrapolated their findings

into their theory of value dimensions. These are six cultural parameters, or
mirror images. Each one contains two bipolar attitudinal opposites about the
world. These are:
• Universalist – particularist
• Individualist – communitarian
• Specificity – diff useness
• Achieved status – ascribed status
• Inner direction – external direction
• Time is sequential – time is synchronous
They found that some countries veered more towards one side of the value
dimension than the other. Individualism and universalism were prevalent in
the United States and Canada, while a communitarian, collectivist viewpoint
dominated in Japan and in Southeast Asia. The value dimensions should not
be viewed as geographic generalizations, however. Both sides could be evident
in one country, even in the same company.
All parts of the value dimension matrix have their plus and minus points.
Individualism breeds good leaders at all levels. It can also foster greed and
selfishness. Communitarianism promotes a sense of belonging, a willingness
to make sacrifices, and a belief in something beyond the individual. This may
be called society, and it is greater than its constituent parts. It may retard
innovation and be slow to change in the face of altered external conditions.
Value dimensions should be looked at in an unbiased way. Those wanting
to deal with them must be able to look both ways, to see and understand in a
circular fashion. This is the secret to cross-cultural management. It is possible
to try to reconcile the different extremes of the value dimension. This can
make the best of both worlds.
In their numerous books Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner give exam-
ples of good circular thinking in action. One of these is from the American
sales division of IBM. Sales personnel were rewarded on quantity of sales.
There was considerable competition among staff to get the best sales figures.
This led to unwanted pressure on buyers who felt they were being hassled by
sales staff. It also led to friction and a lot of stress. This was a classic case of
predominant or out-of-balance individualism. IBM called in consultants in

146 The Thinkers 50
response to rising stress levels, absenteeism, and complaints. The consult-

ants suggested scrapping the compensation system based on individual sales
figures. Instead rewards should go to the salesperson who had learned most
from the buyers. This could be tested by the salespeople giving presentations
to their colleagues, who would then vote for which presentation suggested
that the most had been learned. This was a more communitarian approach.
When it was implemented, the sales people were happy, stress levels and
absenteeism dropped, and so did complaints from buyers about overeager
salespeople. It was also found that the winners in this new environment were
the best salespeople according to the old individualist system.
Conflicts between values are universal and ubiquitous, but different value
dimensions can be reconciled. Those societies and organizations in which
this has occurred are usually healthier, wealthier, and wiser. They point to a
new road to wealth, not through value added, but through value reconciled.
Essential reading
http://www.7d-culture.nl/index1.html
Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business
(McGraw-Hill, 1997)
Building Cross-cultural Competence: How to Create Wealth from Conflicting
Values (Yale University Press, 2000)
Managing People Across Cultures (Culture for Business) (Capstone, 2004)

JACK WELCH
Jack Welch (born 1935) is the former CEO of General Electric. Born in Salem,
Massachusetts, the son of a bus conductor, he studied chemical engineering
at the University of Massachusetts, gaining a Ph.D. in the same subject from
the University of Illinois. He joined General Electric’s plastics division in
1960 and devoted the rest of his working life to the company.
His rise was meteoric. At age 33 he became one of the company’s young-
est general managers. He subsequently served as vice president and sector
executive for the consumer products and services sector and finally was vice
chairman and executive officer. In December 1980, after a little over 20 years
in the company, he was named GE’s eighth CEO, the youngest in the com-
pany’s history.
Welch had an immense impact on corporate America, setting standards
of best practice for its senior executives. He always led by example. He had
pioneered the potential of GE’s plastics divisions. He also laid the foundation
for the success of GE Capital. As CEO he took a number of innovative steps
to promote the disparate elements of what had become an unwieldy conglom-
erate. Welch announced to the various sectors that, unless they could become
either number one or two in their respective industries, they would be spun
off. He commented, “My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener
providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I
had to pull out some weeds, too.” He also introduced the practice of estab-
lishing “anti-groups” within certain divisions whose role was to put forward
the opposite to official policy in a deliberate attempt to encourage debate and
discourage group thinking.

148 The Thinkers 50
He earned a reputation for being endlessly creative, never being hide-

bound by convention when it came to solving a problem.
He introduced Six Sigma Quality Management at GE, after its usefulness
had been shown in Motorola. He was an early advocate of Six Sigma, a means
of achieving near-perfection in manufacturing by gradual, incremental steps,
monitored by specially trained experts called Black Belts and Master Black
Belts.
Welch also became known for his desire to communicate. He is reputed
to have written three to four thousand notes to members of his staff every
year. GE’s financial success came at the expense of extensive layoffs. During
the process of streamlining the company, over 100,000 workers lost their
jobs. His perceived ruthlessness earned him the moniker “Neutron Jack.” He
hated bureaucracy in any form and always sought people who were dedicated
to change. He was also an active teacher at the GE Leadership Center in
Crotonville, New York.
After nearly two decades at the helm, Welch prepared for his departure
and a smooth succession. The person who was to take up his mantle was
chosen from within the GE organization, through a long and rigorous proc-
ess. This resulted in the anointing of Jeffrey Immelt as the prospective CEO in
April 2001 when Welch promised to “walk away and keep walking.” Things
did not go according to plan, however. GE had acquired Honeywell in 1990,
and Welch announced he wanted to stay in charge to oversee its integration.
However, the takeover was scuttled when the European Commission raised
objections that the resultant company would have a dominant and potentially
distorting role in the aviation-financing sector in Europe. Welch was thus
denied a last charge towards the setting sun. Most observers felt this did not
do him any harm. At GE he was a larger-than-life figure.
Since retiring, Welch has continued to consult to a number of Fortune 500
firms. He also found the time to write his memoirs, Jack: Straight from the Gut
(2001), which became the number one best-selling book in the U.S. (Outside
the U.S. the book had the less macho subtitle of What I’ve Learned Leading a
Great Company and Great People.) He has since added Winning: The Ultimate
Business How-To Book (2005). This “…is a book for the people in business who
sweat, get their nails dirty, hire, fire, make hard decisions, and pay the price
when those decisions are wrong.”

Jack Welch 149
Essential reading
http://www.jackwelchwinning.com/biojack.html
Jack: Straight from the Gut (Warner, 2001) (with John A. Byrne)
Winning: The Ultimate Business How-To Book (Collins, 2005) (with Suzy
Welch)

ASSEMBLING
THE 50
Thinkers 50 2005 (2003 ranking in brackets)
1 Michael PORTER (2)

2 Bill GATES (20)
3 C.K. PRAHALAD (12)
4 Tom PETERS (3)
5 Jack WELCH (8)
6 Jim COLLINS (10)
7 Philip KOTLER (6)
8 Henry MINTZBERG (7)
9 Kjell NORDSTRÖM and Jonas RIDDERSTRÅLE (21)
10 Charles HANDY (5)
11 Richard BRANSON (34)
12 Scott ADAMS (27)
13 Thomas STEWART (37)
14 Gary HAMEL (4)
15 Chan KIM and Renée MAUBORGNE (31)
16 Kenichi OHMAE (19)
17 Patrick DIXON (46)
18 Stephen COVEY (16)
19 Rosabeth MOSS KANTER (9)
20 Edward DE BONO (35)

152 Assembling the 50
21 Clayton CHRISTENSEN (22)

22 Robert KAPLAN and David NORTON (15)
23 Peter SENGE (14)
24 Ram CHARAN (–)
25 Fons TROMPENAARS adn Charles HAMPDEN-TURNER(50)
26 Russell ACKOFF (–)
27 Warren BENNIS (13)
28 Chris ARGYRIS (18)
29 Michael DELL (33)
30 Vijay GOVINDARAJAN (–)
31 Malcolm GLADWELL (–)
32 Manfred KETS DE VRIES (43)
33 Rakesh KHURANA (–)
34 Lynda GRATTON (41)
35 Alan GREENSPAN (42)
36 Edgar SCHEIN (17)
37 Ricardo SEMLER (36)
38 Don PEPPERS (48)
39 Paul KRUGMAN (40)
40 Jeff BEZOS (39)
41 Andy GROVE (26)
42 Daniel GOLEMAN (29)
43 Leif EDVINSSON (–)
44 James CHAMPY and Michael HAMMER (25)
45 Rob GOFFEE and Gareth JONES (–)
46 Naomi KLEIN (30)
47 Geert HOFSTEDE (47)
48 Larry BOSSIDY (–)
49 Costas MARKIDES (–)
50 Geoffrey MOORE (38)
Who is the most influential living management thinker?
Visitors to the Thinkers 50 website (www.thinkers50.com) have been provid-

ing their answers. The Thinkers 50 team also e-mailed hundreds of business

Assembling the 50 153
people, consultants, academics, and M.B.A. students throughout the world.

After sifting through more than 1,200 votes, a list of contenders was com-
piled.
The result was a short list of 80 names. A Google search was then under-
taken to establish the number of references for each of those on the list, and
factored into the ranking. Finally, they were assessed against ten criteria on a
scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high).
The measures
1 Originality of ideas
Are the ideas and examples used by the thinker original?
2 Practicality of ideas
Have the ideas promoted by the thinker been implemented in organizations?
And, has the implementation been successful?
3 Presentation style
How proficient is the thinker at presenting his/her ideas orally?
4 Written communication
How proficient is the thinker at presenting his/her ideas in writing?
5 Loyalty of followers
How committed are the thinker’s disciples to spreading the message and
putting it to work?
6 Business sense
Do they practice what they preach in their own business?
7 International outlook
How international are they in outlook and thinking?
8 Rigor of research
How well researched are their books and presentations?

154 Assembling the 50
9 Impact of ideas
Have their ideas had an impact on the way people manage or think about
management?
10 Guru factor
The clincher: are they, for better or worse, guru material by your definition
and expectation?

INDEX
Ackoff, Russell L. 1–3 bottom of the pyramid (BOP) 130

activity-based costing (ABC) 84–5 Box 1-2-3 strategy 60, 61
Adams, Scott 4–5 brainwashing 132
adhocracy 109 brand(s) 96–7
airlines 110 Internet and 97
Allen, Paul 48 brand placement 19
Allied Signal 15 brand recognition 32
Amazon.com 13, 73, 100 Branson, Richard 18–20
analysis 52, 53 British Petroleum 66
anti-globalization movement 96, 97 British Telecom 66
anti-groups 147–8 Bush, George W. 103
Argyris, Chris 6–8, 138 business environment, holistic view 17
Astra Zeneca 66 business process improvement (BPI) 22
auto industry 94 business process reengineering (BPR)
21–3, 129
balanced scorecard 85–6 business research laboratory 30
ballooning 19 business value analysis (BVA) 22
Bar-On, Reuven 57
Barnes & Noble 73 capital 45
battlefield, commercial 93 intellectual 45–7, 141–3
Below-Zeroes 121 strategic 130
Bennis, Warren G. 9–11, 90 capitalism, development of character 116
Bezos, Jeff 12–14 career choices 142
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 49 Center for the Advancement of Systems
biotechnology 28 Approaches (A-CASA) 2
Bombardier 105 CEO churn 90
book retailing 12–13 CEOs
borders, national 117 identity 31
Bossidy, Lawrence A. (Larry) 15–17, 25 jobs market 90

156 Index
obsessive 88 creativity 36–7, 54, 106

role 30 cross-cultural management 80, 145
Ceramic Process Systems (CPS) 27 CSC Index 21, 22
Champy, James (Jim) 21–3 cultures 78, 133
change management 76, 133
corporate 81–2 national 78–9, 80
nature 140 organizational 54–5, 79–80, 132–3,
obstacles 139 139
Charan, Ram 15, 16–17, 24–6 customer capital 142
charisma 88, 91 customer relationship management
Christensen, Clayton 27–9 (CRM) 120
Chrysler 85 customer satisfaction 129
circular thinking 145–6 customers
cluster phenomenon 128 as agents 129
collaborative networks 100 importance 40
Collins, James C. (Jim) 30–2 requirements 26
colonists 106–7 types 120–1
commitment 65, 66, 95
communications 25, 40, 118 De Bono, Edward 36–8
communitarianism 145, 146 defensiveness 37
company types 127 delegation 124
competition 126–8 Dell, Michael 39–41
competitive advantage 28–9 Dell Inc. 39, 40
computer industry 39–40 democracy
confidence 83 internal 2
connectivity, global 82–3 on-the-job 134
connectors 52 dialogue 139
consolidators 106–7 DiCaprio, Leonardo 53
consumer electronics 40 differentiation 127
contract, psychological 133–4 digital nervous system (DNS) 49
core competencies 72, 73, 129 Dilbert 4–5
core competents 115 direct sales 39–40
corporate culture 54–5, 79–80, 132–3, discipline 30–1
139 discussion 139
corporate savior 91 disruption, guru of 28
cost accounting 46 disruptive technologies 27, 112
Covey Leadership Centre 33 diversification 105
Covey, Sean 34 Dixon, Patrick 42–4
Covey, Stephen R. 33–5 Dogbert 5
Creative Management Associates (CMA) double-loop thinking 7–8
54 downsizing 87

Index 157
Drucker, Peter 99, 123, 141 Goffee, Rob 54–6

Goldman Sachs 66
early adopters 52 Goleman, Daniel 57–9
early majority 52, 112 Govindarajan, Vijay (VG) 60–3
economics 102–4 Gratton, Lynda 64–6
education 47, 76, 137 Greenspan, Alan 67–8, 103
management 109 Grove, Andrew (Andy) 69–71
Edvinsson, Leif 45–7 growth 136
emotion 115 Gupta, Anil 61, 62
emotional intelligence 57–9
empathy 56 habits, of highly effective people 34
engineering culture 133 Hamel, Gary 72–4, 129
epidemics 52 Hammer, Michael 21–3
espoused thought 6 Hampden-Turner, Charles 144–6
excellence 123–4 Handy, Charles 54–5, 75–7
execution 15–16, 25 Hewlett-Packard 66
executive culture 133 hierarchies 108
executive role constellation 88 Hofstede, Geert 78–80
Honeywell 15, 148
factory committees 135 human capital 142
fair process 95 human resource management 64–6, 86
Federal Reserve 67 humans, tenets 64–5
financial reporting 84, 85 humor 5
first in the market advantage 107 Hungary 69, 71
first mover advantage 107
Ford 94 IBM 78, 132, 145–6
Fossett, Steve 19 Immelt, Jeff rey 148
four Ps 99, 100 incubators, in-house 28
Franklin Covey 33–4 India 61
individualism 145–6
Gates, William Henry III (Bill) 48–50 industry foresight 72
General Electric (GE) 15, 24, 132, 147–8 inner-city development 128
General Motors 94 innovation 27–8, 62, 115, 116
Geroski, Paul 106 innovators 52
Gerstner, Lou 31 Intel Corporation 69–71
gigs 114 intellectual capital 45–7, 141–3
Gladwell, Malcolm 51–3 INTERACT 1
Global Change Ltd. 42 International Masters in Practicing
global economy 117–19 Management (IMPM) 109
globalization 61, 80, 103, 129 Internet
Godzilla companies 118 brands and 97

158 Index
customers and 129 skills 10

effect on companies 82 styles 58–9
impact on society 82–3 visionary 32
power and reach 43 learning
retailing by 12–14, 40 double-loop 7–8
intuition 56, 117, 118 single-loop 7–8
investor capitalism 90 learning organization 6, 138–40
Ireland 118 lifetime employment 133–4
irrational exuberance 68 logos 96–7
Japan, national economy 128 M-marketing 101

Johnson, Paul 112 Malone, Michael 46
Jones, Gareth 54–6 management 11
cross-cultural 80, 145
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss 81–3 cultures 76, 133
Kaplan, Robert S. 84–6 hands-on approach 26
Kennedy, John F. 73 principles 70
Kets de Vries, Manfred 87–9 professionalization 91–2
Khurana, Rakesh 90–2 management accounting 84
Kim, W. Chan 93–5 management education 109
Kippola, Tom 112 marketing 86, 99–101
Klein, Naomi 96–8 high-tech products 111–12
knowledge cafes 47 holistic 100
knowledge economy 141 Markides, Constantinos C. (Costas) 105–7
knowledge management 141–3 Mauborgne, Renée 93–5
knowledge workers 141, 142–3 mavens 51, 52
Kodak 22 M.B.A. programs 109
Korea, war in 132 M.B.A. qualification 92
Kotler, Philip 99–101 McKinsey & Co. 66
Krugman, Paul 102–4 meaning, search for 64–5
media, in leadership creation 89
late majority 112 microprocessors 69, 70
lateral thinking 36 Microsoft 48–50
Law of the Few 51–2 middle management 124
leadership 9–11 mind-compass methodology 46
charisma 88 mind maps 6–7
levels 31 Mintzberg, Henry 108–10
pipeline 25 Monitor Group 126
qualities 55–6, 82 Monte Cristo syndrome 88
resonant 58 Moore, Geoff rey (Geoff ) 52, 69, 111–13
roles 46 Moss Kanter, Rosabeth 81–3

Index 159
Most Growable Customers (MGCs) 121 portfolio worker 75

Most Valuable Customers (MVCs) 121 potential 61
motivational crisis 43 unexplored 34
motivational precepts 73–4 poverty 130–1
Powell, Nik 18
narcissism 88 Prahalad, Coimatore Krishnao (C. K.) 72,
nation state 117, 119 129
New Trade Theory 102 Praja 130
Nordström, Kjell 114–16 precepts, motivational 73–4
Norton, David 85–6 protectionism 103
Noyce, Robert 69 psychological contract 133–4
Nucor Steel 61
Radiohead 97
Ohmae, Kenichi 117–19 Ramaswamy, Venkat 129
Oldfield, Mike 18 rankings 151–2
operations research 1–3 measures 153–4
organization recycling 40
development stages 133 reengineering 21–3, 129
vital components 49–50 respect 31
organizational culture 54–5, 79–80, revolutionaries 73–4
132–3, 139 Ridderstråle, Jonas 114–16
organizational learning 6, 133, 138–40 Rogers, Martha 120
organizational structure 81–2 root cause analysis 17
PAL partnerships 82 salespeople 52, 145–6

paranoia 70 satire 4–5
partnership 10 Schein, Edgar H. 132–4
Pascale, Richard 125 Schön, Donald 6
PCs 48, 69 Schwab, Charles 74
customized 39 self-discipline 31
Peppers, Don 120–2 self-righteousness 37
perception 36 Semco 135–7
perma-temps 97 Semler, Ricardo 135–7
Perot Systems 21 Senge, Peter 6, 138–40
personal computers see PCs 7-S method 125
personal effectiveness 6 Shamrock organization 75–6
Peters, Tom 114, 123–5 single-loop thinking 7–8
platforms 118 Six Hats 37
policy entrepreneurs 102 Six Sigma 15, 148
Porras, Jerry 32 snap judgment 52–3
Porter, Michael E. 126–8 social capital 45

160 Index
social ecology 61 future 36

social network theory 90 lateral 36
Social Proof in Influence paradigm 112 single-loop 7–8
social responsibility, corporate 109–10 traditional 36
Sony 66 types 52
souls 65 timing 56
spin-out companies 28 tipping points 51–2
spiritual messages 34, 43 toughness 56
Stewart, Thomas A. 141–3 transparency 47
stickiness 52 Trimble, Chris 62
strategic capital 130 Trompenaars, Fons 144–6
strategic inflection points (SIPs) 70 trust 65, 135
strategic intent 72, 73
strategic planning 109 Unisys 66
Strategos 72 Universal Networking Intellectual Capital
strategy 28, 49, 60–2, 82, 105–6 45
global 61–2 universalism 145
intuition and 117
living 65 V2 Records 18
structural capital 142 value(s) 37–8
survivor syndrome 87 concept 129–30
systems thinking 2 types 37
value chain 127
talent 115 value dimensions 145–6
Taylor, Frederick 22 value innovation 93, 94–5
teamwork 10, 82 value systems 127–8
technology adaptation life cycle (TALC) national 128
111, 112 Virgin 18–20
technology companies 111–12 visionaries 23
Teddy Bear factor 88 visionary companies 32
telecommunications 117, 118 VV2 (Vision Version 2) 48
theories-in-use 6
thin slicing 53 Walton, Sam 26
thinking Waterman, Robert 123, 125
circular 145–6 Weber, Max 90
double-loop 7–8 Welch, Jack 24, 147–9

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THE THINKERS 50:

The World’s 50 Most

The Thinkers 50 (US version).indd i 18/04/2006 10:44:00

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright © 2006 by Praeger Publishers

This edition is published under license from London Business Press

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006009985

First published in 2006

Text design and typesetting by Sparks – www.sparks.co.uk

Printed in the United States of America

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Foreword by Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove vii

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Assembling the 50 151

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Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer, London, January 2006

The Thinkers 50 (US version).indd viii 18/04/2006 10:44:05

Russell L. Ackoﬀ was born in Philadelphia in 1919. He studied architecture

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As well as leading to a string of further publications, Ackoﬀ ’s operations

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For Argyris, learning proceeds from making mistakes and correcting

In Model II mind maps there is emphasis on:

There is a need to move people from Model I to Model II selection. Neither

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Warren G. Bennis (born 1925) is currently University Professor and Dis-

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• Vision: an idea of where he or she is going – and leading others

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Lawrence A. Bossidy was born in Pittsﬁeld, Massachusetts, in 1934. After

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• Are supply and demand in balance?

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• External realities: ﬁnancial history, the broader business environment,

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In his youth Richard Branson (born 1950) combined a traditional upbringing

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• Value for money

He is not shy of publicity, something he has gained in his various “record-

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Jim Champy was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He trained as a civil

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Champy was also sensitive to another big weakness in the application of

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