The death of Peter Drucker means that there is a new king of management thinking, write Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer.
THE most influential living management guru is Michael E. Porter, head of Harvard Business School's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, according to the rankings of The Thinkers 50 2005.
The Thinkers 50 ranking is based on the votes of 1,200 business people, consultants, academics, MBA students and visitors to the project's website.
Nonetheless, Professor Porter only just made it to the top. Had the ranking been compiled a few weeks earlier, the title would have gone to Peter Drucker for the third successive year. But the father of modern management died on November 11 at the age of 95.
Professor Porter's ascension is no surprise. After the new economy meltdown, strategy is fashionable again. More of a surprise is a massive surge of support for Bill Gates. Once regarded as the business equivalent of a James Bond villain, Gates's elevation to the No 2 slot suggests that he has successfully reinvented himself through a judicious combination of vacating the Microsoft hot-seat and billion-dollar philanthropic giving.
Also benefiting from a generosity of spirit is another strategy guru, Professor C.K. Prahalad, of the University of Michigan, whose book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid challenges conventional thinking about the world's poor. He rises an impressive nine places to No 3. Professor Prahalad is one of several Indian-born management gurus to make the 2005 ranking. These include the CEO coach Ram Charan (ranked 24), Professor Vijay Govindarajan, of Tuck Business School (30), and Harvard's rising star Professor Rakesh Khurana (33). As yet no Chinese guru has emerged.
Business gurudom is a man's world, with only four women in the top 50. Insead's Professor Renee Mauborgne is the highest placed at 15, followed by Harvard's Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter at 19, Dr Lynda Gratton, of the London Business School (34), and the No Logo author Naomi Klein (46). The anti-management message of Dilbert rises from 27th to 12th place in the guise of the cartoonist Scott Adams. However, despite a strong showing early on, there is no place in this year's ranking for the ultimate management fashion victim David Brent.
THE TOP 50 BUSINESS BRAINS:
1. Michael Porter (2)* - Harvard strategy specialist
2. Bill Gates (20) - Founder of Microsoft
3. C. K. Prahalad (12) - (left) LBS strategy man
4. Tom Peters (3) - Leadership consultant
5. Jack Welch (8) - GE's ex-CEO and celebrity
6. Jim Collins (10) - Author of Good to Great
7. Philip Kotler (6) - Kellogg's marketing guru
8. Henry Mintzberg (7) - Promotes Managers not MBAs
9. Kjell Nordstrom & Jonas Ridderstrale (21) - Funky Business exponents
10. Charles Handy (5) - British portfolio worker
11. Richard Branson (34) - Entrepreneur and Virgin flyer
12. Scott Adams (27) - creator of Dilbert (left)
13. Thomas Stewart (37) - Intellectual Capital author
14. Gary Hamel (4)- Strategy consultant
15. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne (31) - Blue Ocean Strategy duo
16. Kenichi Ohmae (19) - Japanese strategy master
17. Patrick Dixon (46) - Futurist and change guru
18. Stephen Covey (16) - Knows The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
19. Rosabeth Moss Kanter (9) - Harvard's change manager
20. Edward De Bono (35) - Lateral thinker and author
21. Clayton Christensen (22) - Harvard's new-tech guru
22. Robert Kaplan & David Norton (15) - Balanced scorecard creators
23. Peter Senge (14) - Learning organisation inventor
24. Ram Charan (-) - Coach to the CEOs
25. Fons Trompenaars (50) - Intercultural management man
26. Russ Ackoff (-) - Specialist of systems thinking
27. Warren Bennis (13) - Humanist leadership guru
28. Chris Argyris (18) - Action and learning guru
29. Michael Dell (33) - Dell Computer's founder
30. Vijay Govindarajan (-) - Tuck's strategy innovator
31. Malcolm Gladwell (-) - Blink and Tipping Point guru 32. Manfred Kets De Vries (43) - Psychoanalytic economist
33. Rakesh Khurana (-) - Harvard labour market guru
34. Lynda Gratton (41) - LBS people and strategy guru
35. Alan Greenspan (42) - Head of US Federal Reserve
36. Edgar Schein (17) - MIT organisational psychologist
37. Ricardo Semler (36) - Radical CEO of Semco
38. Don Peppers (48) - Customer relationship man
39. Paul Krugman (40) - Economist and columnist
40. Jeff Bezos (39) - Amazon's main man
41. Andy Grove (26) - One of the Intel founders
42. Daniel Goleman (29) - Emotional intelligence inventor
43. Leif Edvinsson (-) - Professor of intellectual capital
44. James Champy (25) - Advocate of re-engineering
45. Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones (-) - Authentic leaders
46. Naomi Klein (30) (left) - No Logo author
47. Geert Hofstede (47) - Cultural expert
48. Larry Bossidy (-) - Chair of Honeywell
49. Costas Markides (-) - LBS strategy professor
50. Geoffrey Moore (38) - Hi-tech marketing man
* 2003 ranking in