Recently, the Wall Street Journal posted a list of the 20 most influential “gurus” (a word used interchangeably with “thinkers”) in the business world, the 19 men (and one woman) that CEO’s and other business executives say they have found give them “easily digestible advice,” primarily on three hot themes, “globalization, motivation and innovation.”
For those of you who also like easily digestible tidbits and may not have time to click on the link to read the full article, here are the top five on the list and their latest books: Gary Hamel, The Future of Management; Thomas L. Friedman, Hot, Flat and Crowded (out this summer); Bill Gates, Business @ the Speed of Thought; Malcolm Gladwell, Blink; and Howard Gardner, Responsibility at Work (editor).
Included as a sidebar is an explanation of the methodology used by Professor Thomas Davenport from Babson College to produce the list of 20, which, by the way, includes seven professors. One of Davenport’s intriguing quotes in the piece is that he believes “traditional business gurus writing ‘weighty tomes’ are in decline.” He doesn’t define weighty but I take it to mean, academic and theoretical. What a sad statement about readers. This list of 20 is an update of one Davenport produced four years ago, and like similar ranking systems, some people moved up, others down, and a few fell off the list altogether even as new ones appeared on the scene. He’s given us a slice of contemporary sociological news, a quick take on the 15 minutes of fame awarded to a slice of the society by another segment, a group of leaders who collectively steer the economic ship of the American economy.
I began to ponder a similar list for higher education. Who are the people that are writing about our enterprise, the people we should all be reading in order to understand where we are, how we got here, and what we should do in the future?
Let me know your choices.
