FC Member Blog

More on Thought Leaders

BY Heath Row | 12-03-2003 | 7:02 PM

This blog is written by a member of our blogging community and expresses that member's views alone.

Expanding on John's three previous entries in August about thought leaders featured in the book What's the Big Idea?, authors Laurence Prusak and Thomas Davenport winnow down the ranking even further in the December issue of Harvard Business Review.

They asked 200 management gurus who their gurus were. The results are fascinating:

Peter Drucker (eight mentions)
James March (seven mentions)
Herbert Simon (six mentions)
Paul Lawrence (five mentions)
Richard Beckhard (four mentions)
Fernard Braudel
Henry Mintzberg
Joseph Schumpeter
Karl Weick
Russell Ackoff (three mentions)
Warren Bennis
Ronald Coase
W. Edwards Deming
Erving Goffman
Gary Hamel
Jay Lorsch
Michael Porter
C.K. Prahalad
Jack Welch
Oliver Williamson

I didn't include everyone who got two mentions, but this is a more-useful corollary to Prusak and Davenport's original list. The gurus' gurus, if you will.