The WSJ journal had a great article yesterday, New Breed of Business Guru Rises. It identified the
top thinkers that business leaders look to for advice:
Psychologists, journalists and celebrity chief executives crowd
the top of a ranking of influential business thinkers compiled for The Wall
Street Journal. The results, based on Google hits, media mentions and academic
citations, ranked author and consultant Gary Hamel No. 1.
But Dr. Hamel is the only traditional business guru in the top five, which
includes two journalists, Thomas Friedman and Malcolm Gladwell, and a former
CEO, Bill Gates.
It further describes how the list has changed since 2003, when Thomas Davenport, a professor at Babson College, compiled a similar ranking for his book What’s the Big Idea? Creating and Capitalizing on the Best New Management Thinking. He compiled the list for this article as well.
The writer, Erin White, looks to Davenport and others for reasons that some of the old guard management gurus were displaced in the rankings by an eclectic new group.
Dr. Davenport says the changes show that time-strapped managers
are hungry for easily digestible advice wherever they can find it. Today, the
most pressing themes include globalization, motivation and innovation.
Traditional business gurus writing "weighty tomes" are in decline, he says.
Managers say it’s no coincidence they tap a broad range of
thinkers. "The demands on all of us for decision-making have grown
exponentially," says Susan Flygare, a sales-strategy executive at Blue Cross and
Blue Shield…"
Not too surprising, I guess.
Also, I found the methodology to be interesting. It is one thing to call someone an influential business thinker – but how do you identify these people and rank them? As I have blogged before, this is one area where providers of STM (scientific, technology and medical) databases like Elsevier have a leg up; they have made a science out of identifying the scientists, journalists and institutions with the most influence.
So what is the connection with PR? Later this week I will be exploring ways of working non-traditional influencers into the communications mix.
