Suntop Media and EFMD have come up with their new ranking of the TOP 50 management thinkers. Note that they don't say gurus, they say thinkers (is there a difference?).
Here it is. What strikes me is how conventional the list is. An econometrician would view this as a strong positive autocorrelation effect: When you're a guru, the odds are strong that next year you are going to be (considered) one again. Or, you can call it the "winner take all" effect. So much for (bio)diversity. Given all the hype around the Long Tail this is rather strange indeed.
I wonder how useful this type of rankings is if it keeps delivering year after year the same kind of info. Don't you want to be taken by surprise, to discover ideas, authors that you were not aware of? Don't get me wrong I do not judge the quality of the work of the guys who made it to the list. Good for them. I wonder about all the good work that "long tail" authors have produced and that is still kept in the dark.
In a nutshell I want to be challenged, I don't care about "sticky averages"!
PS: By the way, since Peter Drucker passed away, they excluded him (even though they recognize that he would have kept his first rank). That's how you create some hype and welcome a new king (Michael Porter). But do ideas really die?
