Business guru

File:CK Prahalad WEForum 2009.jpg

C. K. Prahalad, who conceived the idea of core competency, was ranked first in a list of influential modern business gurus by Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove.

A business guru or management guru is a leading authority on business practices and can be defined as 'a person with influential ideas or theories about business'. The earliest use of the term business guru can be tracked back to the 1960s being used in Business Week. There are no existing qualifications that make someone a business guru. The lists of people who have been accepted as business gurus have constantly changed over time. However, there are some people who have been accepted by a great majority as a business guru and also some organizations which have created their own lists of gurus. One English writer has described management gurus as "overwhelmingly a US phenomenon."

Examples and lists

There is no definitive list of business gurus, but some writers have proposed "personal" lists. These lists are mostly created by organizations such as business magazines or management writers. There have been many business guru lists created through history.

A list consisting of people who are included in almost all of the lists created, collectively known as the "Famous Five", are: Frederick Winslow Taylor, Michael Porter, Alfred Sloan, Peter Drucker, and Douglas McGregor.

In 2001, Harvard Business Review asked the gurus to name their favorite gurus. The people named were Peter Drucker, James March and Herbert Simon.

Another list includes Peter Drucker, Michael Porter, and Tom Peters as the three leading gurus of our time.

There are also many gurus who have emerged and disappeared through history. For example, the Japanese were known for making improvements to the business world and bringing out gurus in the 1980s, which included Keniche Ohmae and Akio Morita. Then European gurus emerged, which included Yves Doz, Geert Hofstede, Manfred Kets De Vries and Charles Handy.

Peter Ferdinand Drucker

Peter Drucker was undoubtedly a well-accomplished and known business guru. He was an author, management consultant and a professor. Throughout his life, he wrote 41 books which have been translated into 37 languages and also wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal for 20 years. He is well recognized for the many contributions he made to the business world.

He started off his business career when he spent two years studying the management structure of General Motors, which led to writing his book "Concept of the Corporation". He was the management professor at NYU, where he was awarded the Presidential Citation, the highest honor.

His first major work was his book 'The End of Economic Man' and after reading it Winston Churchill described Peter Drucker as "one of those writers to whom almost anything can be forgiven because he not only has a mind of his own, but has the gift of starting other minds along a stimulating line of thought."

In 1971, he was a part of the development of one of the first MBA courses at Claremont Graduate School. Later, this management school was named the "Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management". Later, the Japanese businessman Masatoshi Ito's name was added to the school. Its final name was "The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management". The difference between other business management programs and the Drucker School of Management is that the Drucker School teach the course of management as a liberal art, meaning principles from arts, sciences, psychology, politics and religion are added on the module. The MBA course is designed for professionals who have early had a start on their career, the main areas of study are Strategy, Finance, Marketing, Leadership and Global Management.

At his peak, Peter Drucker had a very successful career as a consultant, working with the world's largest companies as well as working with the United States government and the governments of Japan and Canada. He also spent a majority of his time working with non-profit organizations such as The Salvation Army, C.A.R.E., the American Red Cross etc. For his many accomplishments, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2001 by President George W. Bush, as well as receiving honorary doctorates from universities from all around the world. BusinessWeek have named Peter F. Drucker "the man who invented management."

Women gurus and Renee Mauborgne

Women business gurus have been on the rise. In 2013, they took 13 of the 50 places in the Thinkers50 list, when in 2001 they only took up two places. Renee Mauborgne took an impressing second place in the Thinkers50 list, making her the highest ranked women ever on the list. Mauborgne is a Fellow and professor of strategy at INSEAD Business School, Fellow of the World Economic Forum and a member of President Barack Obama's Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Mauborgne is the co-writer of the book Blue Ocean Strategy along with her research partner W. Chan Kim. This book was the fastest selling book in the history of Harvard Business School Press. It has sold over 3.5 million copies, has become a best seller in 5 continents and has been translated into 43 languages. Blue Ocean Strategy has won many awards including 'the best business book of 2005' at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Thinkers50 2011 strategy award for best business book of the decade and made it on many other bestsellers lists. The observer has named Mauborgne and her research partner "the next big gurus to hit the business world".

Clayton M. Christensen

Clayton Christensen is a newly accomplished guru to watch in the business world. He is universally known as an expert in the field of innovation and growth and his ideas have been used in many organizations. Thinkers50 stated that his first book The Innovators Dilemma transformed the way leaders look at innovation and led him to be ranked the worlds number one management guru of 2011 and 2013. This book has also received the Global Business Book Award as the best business book of the year in 1997. The Economist placed it as one of the six most important business books ever written. Thinkers50 has also said that Christensen is following the footsteps of 'legendary business gurus' Peter Drucker and CK Prahalad.

Christensen is currently the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration, where he teaches a Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise course at Harvard Business School. He has written nine books which are all best-sellers, along with over a hundred articles. He has won the McKinsey award five times for his articles in the Harvard Business Review. In 2015, Christensen received the Edison Achievement Award for his contributions to the innovation world.

Criticisms of "guru" status

One management expert, Gary Hamel, says there have been "few genuine breakthroughs" since the work of Taylor and Max Weber. In his book, Hamel says that management is "stuck in a time warp." Similarly, even one of the authors of a book about management gurus warns that management theory is "not served well by fads," citing Enron as a "management fad for its supposed culture of innovation."