LONDON (Nov. 17, 2021) – Thinkers50, the premier ranking of global business thinkers, today announced its 2021 ranking of management thinkers and the winners of its 11 Distinguished Achievement Awards.
Included in this year’s Top 10 ranking is Paradox Strategies Founding Partner Linda A. Hill, who is a Harvard Business School Professor and faculty chair of its Leadership Initiative and a new Women of Color Leadership Program. She is recognized as “a top expert on leadership and innovation, focused on global strategies, and how to harness creativity and engagement for strategic implementation.”
“It’s very humbling to be included on a list with so many individuals whose work I admire,” Linda said. She was first named to the Top 10 in 2013 and received the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2015, and she also ranked in 2019 (22), 2017 (15), 2015 (16), and 2011 (16).
“We’re so proud of Linda and honored to work with her every day at Paradox Strategies,” said Taran Swan, managing partner, on behalf of the entire team. “Aside from having a brilliant mind, she is truly interested in people, which drives the great research she does all over the world with leaders at innovative organizations. She is humble, has a generous spirit, and a deep commitment to learning and helping leaders grow.”
Linda’s consulting and executive education activities focus on leading change and innovation, developing innovation ecosystems, the role of boards in governing innovation, talent development and implementing global strategies. Organizations with which Linda has worked include AIDA, General Electric, RELX, Accenture, UnitedHealth Group, IBM, MasterCard, Mitsubishi, Morgan Stanley, National Bank of Kuwait, AREVA, The Economist, Salesforce.com, and The World Economic Forum.
Linda has been at the forefront of developing cutting-edge learning programs for managers, including Breakthrough Leadership, the winner of the 2013 Brandon Hall Group Award for Best Advance in Unique Learning Technology. She is author of several highly-regarded books and articles on leadership, including Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation (Harvard Business Review Press 2014) and Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives of Becoming a Great Leader.
The 2021 Thinkers50 ranking is topped by Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School. “Amy is already a Thinkers50 Award winner and has risen steadily up the ranking over recent years,” says Thinkers50 cofounder Des Dearlove. “Her work on teamworking is significant and more recently she has been the pioneer of the concept of psychological safety and author of The Fearless Organization, a ground-breaking blueprint on creating a fear-free culture. Her work is repeatedly cited by the practitioners we talk to as practical and inspiring. It combines practicality with intellectual rigour.”
The new Thinkers50 ranking is the most diverse and global to date. It features a majority of women for the first time and includes thinkers from more than ten countries (including the US, China, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, the UK, Switzerland, Canada, Belgium and France). The new entrants to the ranking are: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic , Chen Jin, Erica Dhawan, Frances Frei & Anne Morriss, Hubert Joly, Katy Milkman, Tsedal Neeley, Paul Polman & Andrew Winston, Navi Radjou, Megan Reitz, Laura Morgan Roberts, Sanyin Siang, and Amy Webb.
Thinkers50 Ranking 2021
1. Amy C. Edmondson (3)
2. Rita G. McGrath (5)
3. W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne (1)
4. Alex Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur (4)
5. Roger L. Martin (2)
6. Adam Grant (10)
7. Scott Anthony (9)
8. Whitney Johnson (14)
9. Dan Pink (6)
10. Linda Hill (22)
Others in the top 50 are listed alphabetically: Marshall van Alstyne & Geoff Parker, Sinan Aral, Rachel Botsman, Tiffani Bova, Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Chen Jin, Subir Chowdhury, Dorie Clark, Susan David, Erica Dhawan, Frances Frei & Anne Morriss, Francesca Gino, Heidi Grant, Lynda Gratton, Hal Gregersen, Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang, Morten T. Hansen, Herminia Ibarra, Sheena Iyengar, Michael Jacobides, Hubert Joly, Frederic Laloux, Martin Lindstrom, Nilofer Merchant, Erin Meyer, Katy Milkman, Tsedal Neeley, Gianpiero Petriglieri, Paul Polman & Andrew Winston, Navi Radjou, Megan Reitz, Laura Morgan Roberts, Zhang Ruimin, Sanyin Siang, Simon Sinek, Michael Watkins, Amy Webb, Liz Wiseman, Ming Zeng.
Also announced at Thinkers50 2021 were the recipients of the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards, dubbed the “Oscars of Management Thinking”. The award winners included the father of modern marketing, Philip Kotler, Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix), and Hubert Joly (former CEO of BestBuy). Among the Thinkers50 landmarks were the first Australian award winner (Amantha Imber, winner of the Innovation Award), the Trinidadian duo Leon Prieto and Simone Phipps for their work on cooperative advantage, and two Africa-based winners: Louise van Rhyn (Ideas into Practice) and Nankhonde Kasonde-van den Broek (Coaching).
About Thinkers50
Founded in 2001, Thinkers50 identifies, ranks, and shares the very best management ideas globally. Every two years, the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards recognize individual achievement 2 across a range of management categories, and the definitive global ranking of the 50 most influential business thinkers is published. The previous winners are W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne, Roger Martin, Clayton Christensen, CK Prahalad, Michael Porter, and Peter Drucker.