Tuck profs place in Thinkers50 rankings

Pro­fes­sors Vijay Govin­dara­jan and Richard D'Aveni from the Tuck School of Busi­ness have been named two of the most in­flu­en­tial busi­ness thinkers in the world, with Govin­dara­jan com­ing in at 3rd and D’Aveni plac­ing 21st in just-re­leased rank­ings by busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sult­ing team Crainer Dearlove.

Prof. Govin­dara­jan was awarded the 2011 Break­through Idea award for his con­cept of re­verse in­no­va­tion de­vel­oped dur­ing his re­cent time as GE’s Chief In­no­va­tion Con­sul­tant. Ad­di­tion­ally, Prof. D’Aveni was short­listed for the 2011 Thinker­s50 Strat­egy Award for his the­o­ries about hy­per-com­pe­ti­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the list­ings, the most in­flu­en­tial busi­ness thinker is Clay­ton Chris­tensen, a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Busi­ness School known for his ex­per­tise on in­no­va­tion and growth as well as his abil­ity to apply busi­ness con­cepts to so­ci­etal is­sues.

The rank­ings, which are re­leased every two years, are based on vot­ing at the Thinker­s50 web­site as well as rec­om­men­da­tions made by a team of high-level ad­vi­sors, led by Crainer Dearlove, who eval­u­ated can­di­dates based on “orig­i­nal­ity of ideas; prac­ti­cal­ity of ideas; pre­sen­ta­tion style; writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion; loy­alty of fol­low­ers; busi­ness sense; in­ter­na­tional out­look; rigor of re­search; im­pact of ideas and the elu­sive guru fac­tor.” No­tably, seven of the top thinkers were born in India, and eleven of them are women.