World's 10 top management gurus

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webnsn.com presenting World's 10 top management gurus.
"Deregulation, emerging markets, new forms of globalisation, convergence of
technologies and industries, and ubiquitous connectivity, these have changed
many aspects of business," said management guru C K Prahalad in an interview.
Prahalad is the world's topmost management guru and the first Indian-born
thinker to claim the title.
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The Thinkers 50 2007 list, produced by Suntop Media in association with
Skillsoft, is a definitive guide to who is the most influential living management
thinker. Although the list is still dominated by North Americans (37 of the 50
gurus are from the United States), three more Indian management experts have
made it to the Top 50. As yet, no Chinese guru has emerged.
1. C K PRAHALAD

Coimbatore Krishnao Prahalad was born in the town of Coimbatore in Tamil

Nadu. He studied physics at the University of Madras (now Chennai); worked as
a manager in a branch of the Union Carbide battery company, then went to the
Harvard University and earned a PhD.

Prahalad, is now the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University

Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, specializes in
corporate strategy.
 His books include:
Multinational Mission: Balancing Local Demands and Global Vision (1987),
coauthored with Yves Doz, Competing for the Future (1994), co-authored with
Gary Hamel. Printed in fourteen languages, the book was named the Best
Selling Business Book of the Year in 1994, and The Future of Competition: Co-
Creating Unique Value with Customers (2004) (coauthored with Venkatram
Ramaswamy).

On his vision about India, Prahalad says: "As a country, India must have high and
shared aspirations like it had in 1929 when the leaders of the then Congress
party declared their ambition as Poorna Swaraj. Since then, India has never had
a national aspiration which every Indian could share."
2. BILL GATES

For long the world?s richest man, till he was upstaged by legendary investor
Warren Buffett recently, Bill Gates wears many a hat: computer whiz kid,
entrepreneur extraordinaire, compassionate capitalist, top management
thinker. . .

Born on October 28, 1955, William H Gates III grew up in Seattle with his two
sisters. Their father, William H Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. Their late mother,
Mary, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of
United Way International. Gates attended public elementary school and the
private Lakeside School. There, he discovered his interest in software and
began programming computers at age 13.
In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a freshman, where he lived down
the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft's chief executive officer. While at
Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the
first microcomputer - the MITS Altair. In his junior year, Gates left Harvard to
devote his energies to Microsoft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his
childhood friend Paul Allen.

Books that he wrote: The Road Ahead (1995), held the No. 1 spot on the New
York Times' bestseller list for seven weeks. Business @ the Speed of Thought
(1999). Published in 25 languages the book is available in more than 60
countries. ill Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in
January, 2000; remained as chairman and created the position of chief
software architect. Gates's last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008.
He remains at Microsoft as a part-time, non-executive chairman.

Gates married Melinda French from Dallas, Texas on January 1, 1994. They have
three children: Jennifer Katharine Gates (1996), Rory John Gates (1999) and
Phoebe Adele Gates (2002). Bill Gates' house is a 21st century earth-sheltered
home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington

3. ALAN GREENSPAN

Born on March 6, 1926 in New York City, Alan Greenspan was Chairman of the
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States -- the US Fed --
from 1987 to 2006. It was said that when he sneezed, the world caught a cold.

He currently works as a private advisor, making speeches and providing

consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC. Greenspan
was lauded for his handling of the Black Monday stock market crash that
occurred very shortly after he first became chairman, as well as for his
stewardship of the Internet-driven, 'dot-com' economic boom of the 1990s.

Greenspan is an accomplished saxophone player. While in college, he played in

a jazz band. He attended New York University, and received a BS in Economics
in 1948, and a MA in 1950. Greenspan went to the Columbia University,
intending to pursue advanced economic studies, but subsequently dropped out.

In 1977, NYU awarded him a Ph.D. in Economics. On December 14, 2005, he

was awarded an honorary Doctor of Commercial Science from NYU, his fourth
degree from that institution. Greenspan was famous for his ability to give
technical and confusing speeches. US News & World Report once said "Few can
confuse Wall Street as thoroughly as Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan
Greenspan can."

And Motley Fool radio show included a game called 'What Did the Fed Chief
Say?', where contestants were challenged to interpret snippets of Greenspan's
speeches. His memoir, titled The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
was published in 2007.
4. MICHAEL E PORTER

Michael E Porter is the Bishop William Laurence University Professor at the

Harvard Business School. Porter was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His father was
an army officer. He studied mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton
and then switched to business, earning an MBA and a PhD in economics from
Harvard. He later joined the faculty there.

It is said that Porter has always been obsessed by competition. Unfortunately,

he slipped from the number one position he held in the 2005 list to the fourth
position in the 2007 list.

Books that he wrote:

Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors
(1980)
Comparative Advantage (1985)
The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990)
Can Japan Compete? (1999)
5. GARY HAMEL

The Wall Street Journal has ranked Gary Hamel as the world's most influential
business thinker, and Fortune magazine has called him ?the world's leading
expert on business strategy.? For the last three years, Hamel has also topped
Executive Excellence magazine's annual ranking of the most sought after
management speakers.

Born in 1954, Hamel is a visiting professor at Harvard Business School and

London Business School. Hamel has worked for companies as diverse as General
Electric, Time Warner, Nokia, Nestle, Shell, Best Buy, Procter & Gamble, 3M,
IBM, and Microsoft.

Hamel's landmark books, Leading the Revolution and Competing for the Future,
have appeared on every management bestseller list and have been translated
into more than 20 languages. His latest book, The Future of Management, was
published by the Harvard Business School Press in October 2007 and was
selected by Amazon.com as the best business book of the year. Hamel, a Fellow
of the World Economic Forum and the Strategic Management Society lives in
Northern California and believes that 'Dilbert is the bestselling business book of
all time.'

6. W CHAN KIM & RENEE MAUBORGNE

W Chan Kim is co-founder and co-director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy
Institute and The Boston Consulting Group Bruce D. Henderson Chair Professor
of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD, France.

Prior to joining INSEAD, he was a professor at the University of Michigan

Business School, USA.
He has served as a board member as well as an advisor for a number of
multinational corporations in Europe, the United States and Pacific Asia. He is
an advisory member for the European Union and is the country advisor to
Malaysia. He was born in Korea.

Kim is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum. His Harvard Business Review
articles, co-authored with Renee Mauborgne, are worldwide bestsellers and
have sold over half a million reprints. Renee Mauborgne is the INSEAD
distinguished fellow and a professor of strategy at INSEAD.

Both Kim and Mauborgne are winners of the Eldridge Haynes Prize, awarded by
the Academy of International Business and the Eldridge Haynes Memorial Trust
of Business International, for the best original paper in the field of
international business.

Their book, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and
Make the Competition Irrelevant, published in 2005 has become an
international best seller.
 7. THOMAS J PETERS

Tom Peters was born on November 7, 1942 in Baltimore, Maryland. A writer on

business management practices, Peters is best-known for, In Search of
Excellence, co-authored with Robert H. Waterman, Jr.

He went to Severn School for high school and attended Cornell University,
receiving a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1965, and a master's degree
in 1966. He then studied business at Stanford Business School, receiving an MBA
and PhD. In 2004, he also received an honorary doctorate from the State
University of Management in Moscow.

From 1974 to 1981, Peters worked as a management consultant at McKinsey &

Company, and then in 1981, he went solo and became an independent
consultant. According to Peters, excellence in business depends on eight
ingredients.

Activism, with people who 'do it, fix it (and) try it' Excellent companies 'learn
from the people they serve'. They promote entrepreneurship and autonomy
Management learns from a 'hands-on' approach Workers are valued as the key
to achieve productivity Excellent companies stick to their knitting, exploiting
their core competencies and not pursuing wild goose chases They keep their
form simple and their staff lean; They know how to be simultaneously tight-
fitting and expansive.
 Books that he wrote:
A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difference (1985)
Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution (1987)
Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties
(1992)
The Brand You 50 (1999)

8. JACK WELCH
Born in Salem, Massachusetts, the son of a rail road conductor, he studied
chemical engineering at the university of Massachusetts, gaining a PhD in the
same subject from the university of Illinois.

He joined General Electric's plastics division in 1960. At age 33 he became one

of the company's youngest general managers and in December 1980, after a
little over twenty years in the company, he was named GE's eighth CEO, the
youngest in the company's history.

GE's financial success came at the expense of extensive layoffs. During the
process of streamlining the company, over 100,000 workers lost their job. His
perceived ruthlessness earned him the moniker 'Neutron Jack'.

Since retiring Jack Welch is busy as a consultant to a number of Fortune 500

firms. He also wrote his memoirs: Jack: Straight from the Gut, which was
published in 2001; and with Suzy Welch he wrote Winning: The Ultimate
Business How-To Book in 2005.
9. RICHARD BRANSON
 Richard Branson was born in 1950 and educated at Stowe School. It was here
that he began to set up Student Magazine when he was just 16. By 17 he'd also
set up Student Advisory Centre, which was a charity to help young people.

In 1970, he founded Virgin as a mail order record retailer, and not long after he
opened a record shop in Oxford Street, London. In 1972, a recording studio was
built in Oxfordshire, and the first Virgin artist, Mike Oldfield, recorded 'Tubular
Bells' which was released in 1973. This album went on to sell over 5 million
copies!

Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s - as he set up Virgin
Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label. Richard Branson
is the 236th richest person according to Forbes' 2008 list of billionaires with an
estimated net worth of $7.9 billion.

The eldest and only boy of three children, his sisters are Lindi and Vanessa. His
father Ted was a barrister, and mother, Eve, worked in the theatre, as a glider
pilot instructor and as a flight attendant. Branson has has dyslexia and thus
fared poorly in his studies. Branson is married to his second wife, Joan
Templeman, with whom he has two children: Holly, a doctor, and Sam Branson.

The couple wed in 1989 at Necker Island, a 74 acre island in the British Virgin
Islands that Branson owns. He also owns real estate on the Caribbean island of
Antigua and Barbuda. In 1998 Branson released his autobiography entitled
Losing My Virginity and in Business Stripped Bare.
Branson has guest starred, usually playing himself, on several television shows,
including Friends, Baywatch, Birds of a Feather, Only Fools and Horses, and The
Day Today.

10. JAMES C COLLINS III

Jim Collins was born in in 1958 in Boulder, Colorado. He studied business at

Stanford. He began his research and teaching career on the faculty at Stanford
University's Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished
Teaching Award in 1992. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in
Boulder, Colorado, where he now conducts research and teaches executives
from the corporate and social sectors.

Jim has served as a teacher to senior executives and CEOs at over a hundred
corporations. He has also worked with social sector organisations, such as:
Johns Hopkins Medical School, the Girl Scouts of the USA, the Leadership
Network of Churches, the American Association of K-12 School Superintendents,
and the United States Marine Corps.

In 2005 he published Good to Great. He also authored Beyond

Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company (1995)
and Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (2004). In addition,
Collins is an avid rock climber.
The Thinkers 50 list also include the names of three more management
gurus ?- Ram Charan at rank 22, Vijay Govindarajan at 23, and Rakesh
Khurana at 45.
 RAM CHARAN

Born in 1939 in Uttar Pradesh, Ram Charan worked in his family's shoe shop
while growing up.
He earned a degree in engineering from Banaras Hindu University and later
studied at Harvard Business School, where he was awarded an MBA (1965) and a
doctorate (1967).

Before becoming a full-time consultant in 1978, he taught at the Harvard

Business School, the Kellogg School of Management, and Boston University.
Charan is the author of various popular books on business, including Boards
That Deliver, What The CEO Wants You To Know, Boards At Work, Every Business
Is A Growth Business (with Noel Tichy), Profitable Growth Is eryone's Business,
Confronting Reality, and Execution (with Larry Bossidy and Charles Burck).

Charan was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources in

2000 and named a Distinguished Fellow in 2005. He is also a director of Austin
Industries.
VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN
 Vijay Govindarajan, known as VG, is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of
International Business at the Tuck School and founding director of Tuck's Center
for Global Leadership. He is also the faculty co-director for Global Leadership
2020, Tuck's executive education program that focuses on global management
and is taught on three continents.

Since 2000, Govindarajan has focused on teaching corporations to build

breakthrough businesses while simultaneously sustaining excellence in their
core business??the subject of his new book Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators.
Govindarajan currently writes a column for FastCompany.com. His articles have
also appeared in journals such as Harvard Business Review, strategy+ business,
California Management Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Accounting,
Organisations and Society, Decision Sciences, and Journal of Business Strategy.

Prior to joining the faculty at Tuck, Govindarajan was on the faculties of The
Ohio State University and the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad,
India). He has also served as a visiting professor at Harvard Business School,
INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France), the International University of Japan (Urasa,
Japan), and Helsinki School of Economics (Helsinki, Finland).
Govindarajan received his doctorate and his MBA with distinction from the
Harvard Business School. Prior to this, he received his Chartered Accountancy
degree in India. He was awarded the President's Gold Medal for his outstanding
performance in obtaining the first rank.
RAKESH KHURANA
 Rakesh Khurana is a Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational
Behavior area at the Harvard Business School. He teaches a doctoral seminar on
management and markets and the board of directors and corporate governance
in the MBA programme.

Khurana received his BS from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and his AM
(Sociology) and PhD in Organization Behavior from Harvard University. Prior to
attending graduate school, he worked as a founding member of Cambridge
Technology Partners in sales and marketing. His book on the CEO labour
market, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic
CEOs was published in October, 2002.
Khurana's work on the deficiencies of the CEO labor market and the emergence
of the charismatic CEO succession model is regularly featured by the general
media such as: Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times,
Newsweek, The Washington Post, CNBC, and The Economist. His From Higher
Aims to Hired Hands received the American Sociological Association's Max
Weber Book Award in 2008 for most outstanding contribution to scholarship in
the past two years.