Most management gurus belong to academics not the corporate world, which hardly encourages one to think .

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Do you need brains to run a company? The top-of-mind answer would be “yes”. After all, CEOs get paid very well; someone with intelligence must have organised it that way.

Do you need genius to run a company? The top-of-mind answer in this case would be “no”. A genius wouldn’t be heading a corporate body; there are far more interesting things to do in life. Besides, geniuses are notoriously unstable. Despite all the stuff that is written about innovative organisations and entrepreneurs, every company eventually ends up as a bureaucracy.

So what are we to make of business thinkers? Is there an inherent contradiction in terms? Is this an oxymoron? CrainerDearlove, a company in the field of business communications, has just published its 2009 list of Thinkers 50, described as “the definitive guide to the world’s most influential living management thinkers”.

By and large, there aren’t too many CEOs. In the Top 10, there’s Steve Jobs of Apple at No. 4, Bill Gates of Microsoft at No. 7 and Richard Branson of Virgin at No. 8. All three are, of course, rare and exceptional; Branson named his group Virgin because there were so few of them around.

The next two CEOs are rather surprising entries. There are Ratan Tata, Tata group chairman, at No. 12 and Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO of Infosys, at No. 15. Both have come in from the cold; they weren’t in the top 50 the previous year. In fact, there is a preponderance of Indians on the list. The No. 1 is C.K. Prahalad, the author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits. He teaches at the University of Michigan and is an Indian by birth. (The ‘C’ in his name stands for Coimbatore.)

Prahalad’s position is deserved. He spotted the fortune at the other end of the spectrum when companies were concentrating on the well heeled. He helped several corporates mint a lot of money. And that helps when it has become fashionable to target poverty. (Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and author of Banker to the Poor, comes in at No. 6 for similar reasons.)

The other Indians on the list (apart from Tata and Gopalakrishnan) are all academics. They include Ram Charan (13), Vijay Govindarajan and Rakesh Khurana (45). That doesn’t raise eyebrows. Indians have been consolidating their status as gurus to the world.

But what about Tata and Gopalakrishnan? It hasn’t been a very good year for either of them, though the environment is largely responsible for that. And, when it comes to the Infosys CEO, he’s the third in line after N.R. Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani. So what makes them thinkers more than others (say, B. Ramalinga Raju or the folks at PricewaterhouseCoopers, who were so very creative in accounting)?

Perhaps looking at the research methodology may help. CrainerDearlove surveyed 3,500 people and a panel of experts to determine the 2009 edition of the Thinkers 50. There were 10 criteria used for ranking. These were:

1. Originality of ideas

2. Practicality of ideas

3. Presentation style

4. Written communication

5. Loyalty of followers

6. Business sense

7. International outlook

8. Rigour of research

9. Impact of ideas

10. Guru factor.

The criteria seem fine. But they don’t help us answer the question: why Tata or Gopalakrishnan. But we are perhaps asking the wrong questions. Did the two become CEOs because they are thinkers or did they make the Thinkers 50 list because they are CEOs? Gopalakrishnan became CEO because he is one of the seven founders of the company who are taking turns one by one to be the head honcho. (Smart thinking that.) Tata became CEO because of his name. (Even now another Tata — Noel — is waiting to inherit the mantle from him.)

The moral for every working man and woman: if you want to be an effective thinker, teach. The corporate world is a place to do, not think. It is a rare person who is recognised as a thinker without thinking.

THINK TANK:-

2009 Rank…..Name…..2007 Rank…..Country…..Occupation

1…..C.K. Prahalad……1…….India/US……..Academic
2….Malcolm Gladwell…18…….Canada……….Columnist
3….Paul Krugman…….-……..US…………..Academic
4….Steve Jobs………29…….US…………..CEO of Apple
5….W.Chan Ki
& Renée Mauborgne……..6……Korea/US………Academics
6…Muhammad Yunus…….-……Bangladesh…….Founder of Grameen Bank
7…Bill Gates………..2……US……………Founder of Microsoft
8…Richard Branson……9……UK……………Founder of Virgin
9…Philip Kotler…….11……US……………Academic
10..Gary Hamel………..5……US……………Consultant
12..Ratan Tata………..-……India…………Chairman of Tata Group
13..Ram Charan……….22……India…………Executive coach
15..Kris Gopalakrishnan..-……India…………Co-founder of Infosys
24..Vijay Govindaraja…23……India/US………Academic
44..Rakesh Khurana……45……India/US………Academic

Source: Thinkers 50 list, 2009 ranking, CrainerDearlove