Indian Druckers

That Indian management gurus continue to influence global corporate strategy has been demonstrated again in the latest bi-annual ranking of the world's business gurus by the European Foundation for Management Development. Called Thinkers 50 2005, four of the 50 are Indians. These include strategy guru CK Prahalad of the University of Michigan, who has risen nine places (from the previous list) to No. 3 this time, ahead of Tom Peters but behind Michael Porter of Harvard Business School and Bill Gates of Microsoft. The list also features CEO coach Ram Charan (ranked 24), Vijay Govindarajan of Tuck Business School at Dartmouth College (30) and Harvard Business School's rising star, Professor Rakesh Khurana (33). The Foundation mentions that this list would also have included London Business School's Sumantra Ghoshal, had he not died in 2004. Apart from Prof. Prahalad, the other three have made it to the list for the first time.

In a global ranking that does not feature any Chinese gurus and only one each from Japan and South Korea, what makes Indian management thinkers tick? Almost all of them have the ability to articulate well and are influential authors of books and articles, while at least some of them are also practising consultants with (therefore) first-hand knowledge of business issues to which they apply theory. Further, they have been able to pioneer unique management concepts which have influenced strategy in many global corporations. Whether significant or not, it also happens to be the case that most of them have had the benefit of some part of their education in their home country before they moved to the West, and have therefore been opposed to different cultures and environments. But equally, it seems to take a migration to the US to make innate ability find full expression; no management thinker has made his mark while working in India.

CK Prahalad, who pioneered the concept of core competence, in his latest book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid challenges conventional thinking about markets in poor countries. It is a call to businesses to include the world's 5 billion poor in their profit-making strategies. His earlier book Competing for the Future with Gary Hamel is regarded as one of the best business books of the 1990s. In comparison with the high-profile Prahalad, Ram Charan is a low-profile CEO coach, adviser, author, and teacher who has worked at some of the more successful companies across the world, including GE, Verizon, Novartis, KLM and Home Depot. His expertise in many areas, including corporate governance, stems from his experience in helping boards with strategy sessions, succession, self-evaluation, and CEO compensation. The author of numerous books, he has coached and worked with some of the world's best-known CEOs, including Jack Welch and Larry Bossidy.

Vijay Govindarajan, known as VG, is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at Tuck School, and founding director of Tuck's Center for Global leadership. He is also the faculty co-director for Global leadership 2020, Tuck's executive education programme that focuses on global management and is taught in three continents. Analysts believe that the latest book that he has co-authored, Ten Rules For Strategic Innovators, is likely to be one of the big business books of 2006.

The fourth Indian on the list, Rakesh Khurana, is Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Organisational Behavior area at Harvard Business School. His current research throws up unique insights into the CEO talent market, and indeed challenges many of the myths that high-paid CEOs put out about the connection between pay and performance.