4 Indians among world's top 50 business gurus

Four Indians figure amongst the world's top 50 management gurus, according to The Thinkers 50 2005 -- a ranking by the European Foundation for Management Development.

The four Indians on the elite list are University of Michigan professor C K Prahalad (ranked 3rd), CEO coach Ram Charan (ranked 24th), Tuck Business School professor Vijay Govindarajan (ranked 30th), and Harvard professor Rakesh Khurana (ranked 33rd).

Michael Porter, who heads Harvard Business School's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, has been voted the world's topmost living management guru.

World's Top 50 Management Gurus
1	Michael Porter, Harvard strategy specialist
2	Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft
3	C K Prahalad, LBS strategy specialist
4	Tom Peters, leadership consultant
5	Jack Welch, GE's ex-CEO and celebrity
6	Jim Collins, author of Good to Great
7	Philip Kotler, Kellogg's marketing guru
8	Henry Mintzberg, promotes managers not MBAs
9	Kjell Nordstrom & Jonas Ridderstrale, funky business exponents
10	Charles Handy, British portfolio worker99
11	Richard Branson, entrepreneur and Virgin flyer
12	Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert
13	Thomas Stewart, Intellectual Capital author
14	Gary Hamel, strategy consultant
15	Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy duo
16	Kenichi Ohmae, Japanese strategy master
17	Patrick Dixon, futurist and change guru
18	Stephen Covey, author of Knows The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
19	Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard's change manager
20	Edward De Bono, Lateral thinker and author
21	Clayton Christensen, Harvard's new-tech guru
22	Robert Kaplan & David Norton, Balanced Scorecard creators
23	Peter Senge, learning organisation inventor
24	Ram Charan, coach to the CEOs
25	Fons Trompenaars, intercultural management man
26	Russ Ackoff, specialist of systems thinking
27	Warren Bennis, humanist leadership guru
28	Chris Argyris, action and learning guru
29	Michael Dell, Dell Computer's founder
30	Vijay Govindarajan, Tuck's strategy innovator
31	Malcolm Gladwell, Blink and Tipping Point guru
32	Manfred Kets De Vries, Psychoanalytic economist
33	Rakesh Khurana, Harvard labour market guru
34	Lynda Gratton, LBS people and strategy guru
35	Alan Greenspan, head of US Federal Reserve
36	Edgar Schein, MIT organisational psychologist
37	Ricardo Semler, Radical CEO of Semco
38	Don Peppers, Customer relationship man
39	Paul Krugman, economist and columnist
40	Jeff Bezos, Amazon boss
41	Andy Grove, one of the Intel founders
42	Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence inventor
43	Leif Edvinsson, professor of intellectual capital
44	James Champy, Advocate of re-engineering
45	Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones, authentic leaders
46	Naomi Klein, No Logo author
47	Geert Hofstede, cultural expert
48	Larry Bossidy, chair of Honeywell
49	Costas Markides, LBS strategy professor
50	Geoffrey Moore, hi-tech marketing man

Bill Gates, the co-founder of the world's largest software company Microsoft, is considered the second most influential management guru in the world.

The list names only four women amongst the top 50 business gurus. INSEAD professor Renée Mauborgne is ranked 15th, followed by Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter at 19th slot, London Business School's Lynda Gratton at 34th position and the No Logo author Naomi Klein at 46.

Scott Adams, cartoonist and creator of comic strip Dilbert, has been ranked the 12th most influential management guru.

GE's former chief executive Jack Welch, marketing expert Philip Kotler, Virgin boss Richard Branson, Dell Computers founder Michael Dell too find a place in the list.

The Thinkers 50 ranking is based on votes of businessmen, consultants, scholars, and students.

Peter Drucker, who died on November 11, had been ranked the world's top business guru for the past two years. The European Foundation for Management Development says that the list would also have included London Business School's Sumantra Ghoshal had he been alive.