Thought Leadership

There have been many thought leaders in Management academia and consulting- some of them have also been CEOs, like Ricardo Semler, but practiced many path-breaking ideas.

Peter Drucker, Sharu Rangnekar, Maslow, Erik Erikson, Jerome McCarthy, Igor Ansoff, Philip Kotler, Parasuraman, C.K. Prahalad, Michael Hammer (propagated Business Process Re-engineering), Seth Godin, David Ogilvy, Guy Kawasaki, Ricardo Semler, Jag Sheth, David Aaker, Kenichi Ohmae (globalization, strategy), Ries and Trout (the concept of Positioning), Rensis Likert, HJ Eysenck

Maybe one thing common to most of them was that they dealt with practice of management or related fields like Psychology, Sociology in some way. Barring a couple, most were not great academic researchers by way of journal publications. Even Kotler is famous more due to his simplification of marketing concepts into a best-selling text book.

Breakthrough ideas generally need proof of practice, at least to an extent that it is useful in some contexts. Science recommends experimentation, with replicability, as proof. Social science finds usefulness in practice a good substitute.

Reading some of these people over the years has been an eye-opener.