Thinkers 50: Business Thought Leaders from India: The Best Ideas on Innovation, Management, Strategy, and Leadership

CHAPTER 1

The Rise of Indian Thinking

The rarefied world of business thinking has been largely American terrain over the last hundred years. From Frederick Taylor with his stopwatch at the beginning of the twentieth century to the modern generation of gurus, Americans have monopolized business wisdom. Even the brief love affair with Japanese business practices in the early 1980s was intellectually colonized by American thinkers such as W. Edwards Deming and Richard Pascale.

Now change is in the air. A new generation of thinkers and ideas is emerging from India and elsewhere. Superstars in the business guru firmament over recent years have included C. K. Prahalad, coauthor of the bestselling Competing for the Future; the itinerant executive coach ...