INSEAD professors ranked among world’s most influential management thinkers

INSEAD, the business school for the world, announced today that four of its faculty members have been ranked in the world’s top 50 most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50. The biennial ranking is widely regarded as the “Oscars of Management Thinking” and recognises thought leaders for their achievements in business and academia.

W. Chan Kim, INSEAD Professor of Strategy and International Management, and Renée Mauborgne, INSEAD Affiliate Professor of Strategy and Distinguished Fellow of Strategy and International Management, were ranked number three. They were named as the world’s most influential management thinkers by the Thinkers50 2019. 

Professors Kim and Mauborgne are co-directors of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute and co-authors of the New York Times Bestseller and a #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller, Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing - Proven Steps to Inspire Confidence and Seize New Growth (Hachette, 2017), and the global bestseller Blue Ocean Strategy (2005, Expanded Edition 2015). Blue Ocean Strategy is recognised as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written. It has sold over four million copies and is published in a record-breaking 46 languages. It is a bestseller across five continents. 

Erin Meyer, INSEAD Professor of Management Practice, won the Thinkers50 Talent Award with Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, for their book No Rules Rules – Netflix and the culture of reinvention, which was published in 2020. Professor Meyer specialises in the field of cross-cultural Management. She is also the best-selling author of The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. Thinkers50 said, “Meyer puts the Netflix talent deck into a new global and cultural context. Together with reed Hastings they chart a powerful new way forward for maximizing talent.” 

Professor Meyer was also ranked in the top 50 thinkers list along with colleague Gianpiero Petriglieri, INSEAD Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour. For the first time only the top ten have been placed in ranking order by Thinkers50, with the remaining 40 listed alphabetically.  

At the Thinkers50 gala, of which INSEAD was Education Partner this year, Professors Kim and Mauborgne spoke at a session on “The Purpose of Human Ingenuity and Innovation”. 

Professor Meyer was a speaker, alongside Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, for a session on “Netflix: Beyond Rules”.  

Professor Petriglieri’s award-winning research and teaching focus on what it means, and what it takes, to become a leader. His research has appeared in top academic journals and his work is frequently featured in the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. At INSEAD, he directs the Management Acceleration Programme, the school’s flagship executive programme for emerging leaders, as well as customised leadership programmes for multinationals in a variety of industries. 

This year’s Thinkers50 Awards Gala was a two-day virtual event, hosted from the Thinkers50 studio in London.  

Discover the most popular case studies from the INSEAD Thinkers50: