Move over Bill Gates. C.K. Prahalad, of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, is now the world’s foremost management thinker.
| (Photo by Steve Kuzma) |
Prahalad, the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy at the Ross School, is ranked No. 1 on Suntop Media’s “Thinkers 50,” a biennial ranking of the top 50 management thought leaders worldwide.
In addition, Ross School Professor David Ulrich, who directs the Human Resource Executive Program, made the list at No. 42 — just one spot behind former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore.
Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove of Suntop Media say not many management thinkers actually follow up important early ideas with genuinely groundbreaking future ideas.
“This is what C.K. Prahalad has managed to do,” Crainer says. “His work with Gary Hamel set the strategic agenda of the 1990s. Now, with ‘The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,’ he has established the social, entrepreneurial and economic agenda of our times.”
Prahalad, who ranked No. 3 in 2005, bumped Microsoft founder Gates down to the second spot on the list. Rounding out the top five are former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Harvard strategy guru and Ann Arbor native Michael Porter, and Strategos founder Gary Hamel, a Ross School doctoral graduate and long-time collaborator of Prahalad.
Other notables on the list are Ross School doctoral alum Chan Kim, Tom Peters, Jack Welch, Richard Branson, Stephen Covey, Donald Trump and Steve Jobs.
Prahalad’s collaboration with Hamel resulted in the best-selling 1994 book “Competing for the Future.’ In 2004 he wrote two more best-sellers: “The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers” (with the Ross School’s Venkat Ramaswamy) and “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.”
