Touch Points by Steve Finikiotis

Babson professor and writer Thomas H. Davenport ranks business “gurus” that are in demand these among business executives, as he did in his 2003 book, “What’s the Big Idea?”  Davenport’s work is described in today’s Wall Street Journal piece, “A New Breed of Gurus”.

Among other things, Davenport notices that today’s most most pressing themes are globalization, motivation and innovation. He also observes that traditional business gurus writing “weighty tomes” are giving way to thought leaders from fields like psychology, journalism and experienced C-suite executives.

He’s so right about this. Traditional business writing doesn’t address the complex forces driving the marketplace these days.

Smart, creative practitioners are continuously looking for new insights which they can use to solve their most pressing challenges–especially challenges concerning collaborating with peers and partners alike to solve pressing challenges across time and space.

I agree with some of Davenport’s picks, but most especially top-ranked guru, Gary Hamel, who has written one of the most compelling business books around, The Future of Management (’07), and one that is inspiring a new way to think about organizational management.  While Hamel’s academic credentials may place him in the “traditional” category of thinkers, his work is revolutionary.

Hamel writes, “You can’t shuffle your way to the next S-curve.  You have to leap.  You have to vault over your preconceived notions, over everyone else’s best practices, over the advice of all the experts, and over your doubts….[You] don’t have to leap with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, or with your career dangling precariously out of your pocket.  You don’t have to leap with no sense of where you’re going to land.  But you do have to leap—at least with your imagination.”

Hamel’s approach is ideally suited for an emerging business gestalt in a world that moves faster every day.  His work is emblematic of why we’re increasingly looking outside traditional business management for creative ways to solve problems.  His work validates the notion of looking outside the box for novel yet practical ways of solving problems.