INSEAD Professors Named to World’s Top 50 Thinkers List

INSEAD, the leading international business school, today announced that three of its professors – W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne and Herminia Ibarra – have been named to the 2011 Thinkers50 – the definitive global ranking of management thinkers who have had an impact on business.

Professors Kim and Mauborgne were placed second overall on the list of highly regarded luminaries in the business world. Renée Mauborgne was the highest ranked woman appearing on the list and Herminia Ibarra was shortlisted for the 2011 Thinkers50 Leadership Award, being placed number 28 overall among the World’s Top 50 Thinkers.

Kim and Mauborgne are INSEAD professors of strategy and management and co-directors of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute. They are authors of the best-selling Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant which highlights how companies can create uncontested market space through value innovation. Blue Ocean Strategy has sold over two million copies and has been embraced by companies, not-for-profits, and national governments around the world.

The INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute was launched in 2007 as a result of the strong interest around the globe in the theory of blue ocean strategy. Today the Institute thrives as an intellectual hub with its Institute Executive Fellows coming from the best schools across the globe.

Professor Mauborgne is a member of President Barack Obama’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and a Fellow of the World Economic Forum at Davos. Mauborgne has published numerous articles on strategy and managing the multinational which can be found in: Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of International Business Studies, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review and others.

Professor Kim has served as a board member as well as an advisor for a number of multinational corporations in Europe, the United States and Pacific Asia. He is an Advisory Member for the European Union and a Fellow of the World Economic Forum. His Harvard Business Review articles, co-authored with Renée Mauborgne, are worldwide bestsellers and have sold over half a million reprints.

Professor Ibarra is the Cora Chaired Professor of Leadership and Learning, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, and Area Chair for the Organisational Behaviour Department at INSEAD. Prior to joining INSEAD she served on the Harvard Business School faculty for thirteen years. She is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Councils and the Visiting Committee of the Harvard Business School.

A native of Cuba, Professor Ibarra is an expert on professional and leadership development. Her book Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (Harvard Business School Press, 2003) documents how people reinvent themselves at work. Her numerous articles on leadership, networking, career development, women's careers and professional identity are published in leading journals including the Harvard Business Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, and Organization Science.

Other notable thinkers in the business world appearing on the 2011 Thinkers50 list include innovation expert Clayton Christensen, author Malcolm Gladwell and management guru Jim Collins, co-author of the new book “Great by Choice,” with INSEAD Professor Morten Hansen.

The Thinkers50 ranking is based on voting at the Thinkers50 website and input from a team of advisers led by Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove in the United Kingdom. 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.

For the 2011 ranking, more than 10,000 votes were cast and advisors were drawn from America, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.

For a full listing of the 2011 Thinkers50, please visit: http://www.thinkers50.com