McCain was trying to present Obama as somebody that would be incapable of taking a decision when facing a tough situation. In the world of business, as in government, going for the right choice is what marks the difference between success and failure. So why still so much confusion on what strategy entails?

Roger Martin, the soon to step down Dean of the Rotman School of Management of the University of Toronto, has co-authored a Playing to Win, in which he argues that the most important thing for a business of any size is to make 5 key strategic choices. And these choices have to be taken consciously and from the start. It cannot be left to fate, or even worse, procrastinate endlessly.  Because we all know that if we can avoid it, most of us will postpone making a choice, something that in essence implies taking a risk.

The point that Martin does is that strategy is not planning.  It’s about making 5 key choices, which will lead to an “integrated strategy”, i.e. a single goal. And to be able to reach these decisions, they have to be based in 5 simple questions. Answering these five questions is what will make possible to establish a successful strategy.

Martin is considered one of the world’s top management thinkers. He is currently in 6^th position in the Thinkers50 ranking. Since this group based in London launched their biannual list the business press has widely reported it.

Here you can listen to a longer conversation of Martin, together with his writing partner, former P&G CEO A.G. Lafley, with BBC’s Peter Day in his radio programme the World of Business.

By EG

That wasn’t worth staying up for.

The interweb is currently being littered with sarcastic snipes on the fact that we once again survived another End of the World catastrophe.

I have to say though that the older I get the more it seems less hype over things like the world ending. Not sure if I’m appropriately maturing or if I’m just irreversibly getting boring. I am inclined to say it would have to be the latter because one of the first things I said after 12/21/12 passed was, “Well I guess I have to write that new blog entry I was procrastinating on.”

TOP 50 Management Gurus of 11-12′

Today I’ll be starting an SMB series based on the Thinkers 50 2011 winners. Every two years Thinkers50 announces a list of 50 of the most influential Management Gurus/Thinkers, the last results were released on November 2011.

Since recently coming across the list I realized that I barely knew any of these illustrious Game-changers. To amend lack of knowledge of mine,  I decided to research and on the 2011 list. I’ll be discussing their claim to fame, new books/articles, recent interviews and any other current news about them.

Let’s start off this series then with the current most influential authority in Management, and arguably the leading expert in Innovation Clayton Christensen.

Clayton Christensen

Clayton Christensen

Short Bio: Is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School

Claim to Fame: He is most well known for his work in Innovation. In particular he highlights the theory of Disruptive Innovation. Disruptive innovation is generally a transformation of a product that was previously expensive or complicated; that only a few were able to posses them, into one that is inexpensive and simple that it easily becomes readily available to a good number of consumers.

Videos: Here are some really interesting interviews by Christensen.

- Explanation of Disruptive Innovation

- How Will You Measure Your Life?

Current Going On: Christensen continues to write and contribute to a number of journal particularly the Harvard Business Review (HBR).  In the December issue of this year he talks about Surviving Disruption with co-writer Maxwell Wessel.

Books: Christensen is most well known for his book Innovator’s Dilemma. Below is a list of some of his books.

- How will You Measure Your Life?   (Most Recent Book – 2012)

- The Innovative University

- Innovation Killers

- Disrupting Class

- The Innovator’s Prescription

- Seeing What’s Next

- The Innovator’s Solution

- Innovation and the General Manager

- The Innovator’s Dilemma

Hope you all enjoyed reading that entry as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you have any comments, suggestions, questions, or even criticism please let me hear about it.

Next time I’ll be writing about  W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne.

Now go and enjoy the continuing Existence of the World.

What makes this app innovative is that it is an evolving ‘book’ full of real-time, rich media content that allows readers (users) to navigate and interact in a way that a hardcopy or even eReader book couldn’t accommodate.

This is the start of a new breed of reference books that shows what you can do to take digital content to the next level. Think of the potential for learning and teaching… a 21^st century textbook that allows the learner to navigate, press, wipe, slide, watch, listen and share all in the one place. It’s served up in a highly interactive and engaging way for a digital savvy generation.

The app itself is well worth a look offering Don’s latest thinking on how we can rebuild 10 institutions, including education, for the networked age.

In his Ted Talk, Four principles for the open world Don talks about the notion of sharing IP (intellectual property) to provide the rising tide in order to ‘lift everyone’s boats’. He sees the potential of the digital, global ecomony as a ‘turning point in human history’ requiring organisations and businesses to become more open, porous and fluid. It’s likely this thinking is the reason why he has made his new book free via iTunes.

There are some tools already available like iBooks Author app for users to create something similar with text enriched by multimedia and the ability to publish/share the book via iTunes and other channels.

I’m sure we can expect to see even more sophisticated ‘books’ like this in the future. I would love to hear your thoughts on the 21^st century textbook?

About the Thinkers50

The definitive global ranking of management thinkers is published every two years. The 2009 winner was CK Prahalad. The ranking is based on voting at the Thinkers50 website and input from a team of advisers led by Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove. The Thinkers50 has ten established criteria by which thinkers are evaluated — 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.

Clayton M. Christensen, #1 in the Thinkers50 ranking and Winner of  2011 Thinkers50 Innovation Award. Watch the Interview on Thinkers50

Clayton M. Christensen is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation and growth.

Christensen is the bestselling author of a number of books: his seminal work, The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997) which received the Global Business Book Award for the best business book of the year; The Innovator’s Solution (2003); Seeing What’s Next (2004); Disrupting Class (2008) looks at the root causes of why schools struggle and offers solutions; The Innovator’s Prescription (2009) examines how to fix the US healthcare system; The Innovators’ DNA (2011); and The Innovative University (2011).

Christensen and his writings have won a number of awards, including five McKinsey Awards for articles published in theHarvard Business Review.

Christensen became a faculty member at the Harvard Business School in 1992, and was awarded a full professorship with tenure in 1998, becoming the first professor in the school’s modern history to achieve tenure at such an accelerated pace.

In 2000, Christensen founded Innosight, a consulting firm that uses his theories to help companies create new growth businesses. Christensen is also the founder of Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank whose mission is to apply his theories to vexing societal problems such as healthcare and education.

Christensen has advised the executives of many of the world’s major corporations. They generate tens of billions of dollars in revenues every year from product and service innovations that were inspired by his research.

Marshall Goldsmith, #7 in the Thinkers50 ranking and Winner of 2011 Thinkers50 Leadership Award. Watch the Interview on Thinkers50.

Marshall Goldsmith is one of the world’s leading executive coaches. He was a pioneer of the 360-degree feedback technique. His success is built on a no-nonsense approach to leaders and leadership and a Buddhist philosophy.

Over the years, Goldsmith has maintained a prodigious output as author, co-author, and editor, of more than 30 books. These include The Leader of the Future (co-edited with Frances Hesselbein and Richard Beckhard, 1996), which has been translated into 25 languages, AMA Handbook of Leadership (co-edited with John Baldoni , Sarah McArthur, 2010), and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There in Sales: How Successful Salespeople Take it to the Next Level (co-edited with Bill Hawkins, Don Brown, 2011) 

The follow-up was MOJO: How to Get It, How to Keep It, and How to Get It Back If You Lose It (with Mark Reiter, 2010). Our Mojo is “the moment when we do something that’s purposeful, powerful, and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it”. It is influenced by four factors, identity, achievement, reputation and acceptance.

Goldsmith’s own Mojo seems indefatigable. He originally got into the executive coaching business by accident. A CEO of a large organization mentioned an employee that he didn’t think lived the organization’s values, and Goldsmith offered to help on a no improvement, no fee basis. It worked.

For Goldsmith, executive coaching is not a brief interaction. Instead it is a longer-term commitment to work with an executive and their team, to find out how that person is viewed and provide feedback, which can be worked into a coaching program.

A partner in Marshall Goldsmith Group, a group of top-rank executive and management coaches, Goldsmith focuses on three things “teaching, coaching and writing.” A long time Buddhist, Goldsmith tries, where possible, to use Buddha’s teachings in his work.

Goldsmith received his MBA from Indiana University and his doctorate from UCLA. Between 1976 and 2000 he was assistant professor and associate dean in the business college of Loyola Marymount College, Los Angeles. Since then he has taught executive education at Dartmouth College’s Tuck Business School and other leading universities.

Don Tapscott, #9 in the Thinkers50 ranking and shortlisted for 2011 Thinkers50 Global Village Award and 2011 Thinkers50 Book Award. Watch the Interview on Thinkers50.com.

Don Tapscott is an adjunct professor of management at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and is one of the world’s leading authorities on innovation, media, globalization and the economic and social impact of technology on business and society.

The author or co-author of 14 books, Tapscott wrote the 1992 best seller Paradigm Shift. His 1995 book The Digital Economy examined the transformational nature of the Internet and in 1997 he defined the Net Generation and the “digital divide” in Growing Up Digital. His 2000 work, Digital Capital, introduced the idea of “the business web.” He wrote The Naked Corporation (2002); and Grown Up Digital (2009). Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything was the best selling management book in America in 2007.

The Economist called his newest work Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World a “Schumpeterian story of creative destruction,” and the Huffington Post said it’s “nothing less than a game plan to fix a broken world.”

When he is not being a cyber-guru you might find Tapscott playing keyboards in Toronto-based band Men in Suits.

Lynda Gratton, #12 in the Thinkers50 ranking. Watch the Interview on Thinkers50.

Lynda Gratton is professor of management practice at London Business School, where she teaches both executives and MBA students. She is considered a leading authority on people in organizations, and the future of work. In 2009 she launched the ‘Future of Work’ research consortium, which has now engaged executives from more than 50 companies around the world.

Gratton is perhaps best known for her work on collaborative working. In her 2007 book Hot Spots she introduced the idea of “organizational hot spots” – areas of highly engaged and innovative activity within organizations.

Gratton argues that we are moving from a business world based on competition to one that is based on collaboration and shared purpose.

Gratton has written seven books, including: Living Strategy: Putting People at the Heart of Corporate Purpose, (2000), The Democratic Enterprise; (2003); Hot Spots (2007); Glow: How you can Radiate Energy Innovation and Success (2010), which focused on how individuals can create their own hot spots; and, most recently, The Shift: The future of work is already here(2011).

Richard D’Aveni, #21 in the Thinkers50 ranking and Shortlisted for 2011 Thinkers50 Strategy Award. Watch the Interview on Thinkers50.com.

Richard D’Aveni is professor of strategic management at the Tuck Business School at Dartmouth University. An expert on competitive strategy, and winner of the prestigious A.T. Kearney Award for outstanding research in general management by the Academy of Management, D’Aveni is probably best known for the concept of hyper-competition, a term he coined in the early 1990s.

His 1994 book Hyper-competition was described by Fortune magazine as “a modern-day analogue to The Art of War.” In it, D’Aveni presciently envisaged a world where sustainable advantage was no longer possible. He developed this idea inHyper-competitive Rivalries (1995); and then in Strategic Supremacy (2001), he demonstrated how companies could achieve supremacy in a hyper-competitive world.

In Beating the Commodity Trap: How Smart Companies Out-maneuver their Rivals to Win the Price War (2010), D’Aveni looked at how firms can turn commoditization to their advantage. In his forthcoming book Strategic Capitalism, he addresses the competitive clash of nations, arguing that China and America are competing on different models of capitalism.

David Ulrich, #23 in the Thinkers50 ranking.

Dave Ulrich is a professor at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, at the University of Michigan. Ulrich’s work covers the spectrum organization topics such as leadership, talent, human resources, culture, coaching, and change. He has helped many leaders build their personal and organization leadership brand, HR departments and professionals deliver value, and organizations align their culture with customer expectations (e.g., he and a team of colleagues helped GE and the then-CEO Jack Welch to design the bureaucracy cutting Workout program).

With a prodigious output of HR, leadership, and organization related publications to his name, Ulrich is the co-author of 23 books. These include HR books (Human Resource Champions; HR Value Proposition; HR Transformation; HR Competencies; leadership books (Why the Bottom Line ISN’T!; Leadership Code, Leadership Brand, Leadership in Asia; Asian Leadership) and organization books (Boundaryless Organization; Learning Organization; GE Workout)

In his latest book The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win (2011), Ulrich, with his psychologist wife Wendy, examines people’s motivation for working and what they get out of work.

Henry Mintzberg, #30 in the Thinkers50 ranking and shortlisted for 2011 Thinkers50 Strategy Award. Read his Interview on Thinkers50.

Henry Mintzberg is Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies, at the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University in Montreal. His work has focused on the work of the manager, and how managers are trained and developed.

The author or co-author of 15 books, Mintzberg is, perhaps, best known for his work on organizational forms – identifying five types of organization: simple structure; machine bureaucracy; professional bureaucracy; the divisionalized form; and the adhocracy. He is also credited with advancing the idea of emergent strategy – the idea that effective strategy emerges from conversations within an organization rather than being imposed from on high.

Cheerfully contrarian, Mintzberg is a long time critic of traditional MBA programs. In his first book, The Nature of Managerial Work (1973) challenged the established thinking about the role of the manager, and is one of the few books that actually examine what managers do, rather than discussing what they should do. Other highlights include The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994); Managers not MBAs (2004), and Managing (2009).

Subir Chowdhury, #50 in the Thinkers50 ranking.

Subir Chowdhury is chairman and CEO of ASI Consulting Group and a globally respected quality expert and strategist. He advises CEOs and senior leaders of Fortune 100 companies as well as organizations in the public, private and not-for profit sectors all over the world, helping them make quality a part of their business culture.

Tagged the “The Quality Prophet,” by Business Week, Chowdhury is the author of the international bestseller The Power of Six Sigma: An Inspiring Tale of How Six Sigma is Transforming the Way We Work (2001), (translated into more than 20 languages), and 12 other business titles. His Design for Six Sigma (2002) is the first book on the topic and credited with popularizing the DFSS philosophy worldwide.

His book The Ice Cream Maker (2005) is a business novella about Pete and the ice cream factory he manages; in which he introduces the next generation management system – LEO – Listen, Enrich and Optimize. The book follows Pete as he improves his business by applying LEO principles; this bestselling book was distributed to every member of the US Congress.

Chowdhury’s latest book is The Power of LEO: The Revolutionary Process for Achieving Extraordinary Results (2011).

For more information about the Thinkers50 and the complete list, please visit: http://www.thinkers50.com/results/2011