The biennial Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards were created in 2011 to recognise the exceptional contributions of individual thinkers.
Distinguished Achievement Award Categories:
In addition to the category awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award is given to an individual thinker in recognition of an outstanding body of work over an entire lifetime; and a Founders’ Award is given to individuals in the world of business ideas who provide industry leadership and inspiration.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Recognising an outstanding body of work over an entire lifetime.
The Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award is given to someone who has had a long-term impact on the way people think about and practice management. The first-ever award in this category was given to Charles Handy in 2011. Recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award gain automatic entry into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame.
See the complete list of Lifetime Achievement Award recipients
FOUNDERS’ AWARD
For an individual who has paved the way for thought leadership to flourish.
The Thinkers50 Founders’ Award, introduced in 2019, recognises individuals in the world of business ideas who provide industry leadership and inspiration. It acknowledges the invaluable contribution of the architects who lay the foundations for ideas to flourish. The first Thinkers50 Founders’ Award recipient was Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño, President of IE University.
Nominations for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Category Awards are open from May to July in Thinkers50 Awards Gala years (odd-numbered years), and shortlists are announced in late summer. Awards are conferred in November at the biennial Thinkers50 Awards Gala event.
All nominations for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards are considered by the Thinkers50 Panel of Advisors.
Public participation is an important part of the Awards process. In Thinkers50 Awards years (odd-numbered years) all interested parties are invited to participate in the nomination process by submitting online the names and qualifications of thinkers they wish to put forward for consideration. Nominations from across the globe are accepted – and encouraged.
The Thinkers50 Distinguished
Achievement Awards have been described by the Financial Times as
for the next Distinguished Achievement Awards
Every two years, Thinkers50 hosts a unique event in central London – a gathering of great business minds for a day of ideas, debate, and networking, followed by an elegant evening celebrating the very best in management thinking.
Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, by AG Lafley & Roger Martin (HBR Press, 2013).
for the circular economy
The circular economy is an industrial system designed to overcome the leakages of today’s linear “take-make-dispose” economic model and the current system’s resource constraints. It suggests ways to re-use material inputs to the maximum possible level whilst replacing ‘end-of-life’ concepts with one of restoration through the superior design of materials, products, systems and business models, as well as a shift toward renewable energy. Working with their Global Partners including B&Q, Cisco, Philips and Renault, and their Knowledge Partner McKinsey & Company, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation aims to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.
Teaches innovation at Stanford and Santa Clara Universities. In a meteoric 20-year career, Nilofer Merchant has gone from being an administrator to becoming a CEO and then board member of a NASDAQ-traded company. Along the way she has gathered monikers such as “the Jane Bond of Innovation” for her ability to guide Fortune 500 and start-up companies. She is the author two best-selling books: The New How (O’Reilly, 2010); and 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra (HBR Press, 2012).
The author or co-author of 15 widely read books including Macrowikinomics (revised paperback 2012) and most recently Radical Openness: Four Unexpected Principles for Success (TED, 2013), with Anthony D. Williams. His current work champions Global Solutions Networks, non-state networks achieving new forms of cooperation, social change and even the production of global public value.
A fellow of the Cambridge Judge Business School, where he is the former director of the Centre for India & Global Business, Radjou is co-author (with Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja) of Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth (Jossey Bass, 2012); and (with Prasad Kaipa) From Smart to Wise (Jossey Bass, 2013).
Shortlisted for the 2011 Thinkers50 Leadership Award, Ibarra is the Cora Chaired Professor of Leadership and Learning and Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD. Her work focuses on professional and leadership development, including collaborative leadership, identity, women’s careers and career transition. She is the author of Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (HBR Press, 2003). Her current research examines CEO leadership and corporate performance, and includes co-authoring “The Best Performing CEOs in the World,” (Harvard Business Review, 2010).
An associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, McGrath is the author of a string of well-received Harvard Business Review articles. She is the author of three books in addition to her latest bestseller, The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business (HBR Press, 2013).
Ikujiro Nonaka became interested in management and organization while working for Fuji Electric in 1958. “My ambition was to develop a new, original, made in Japan theory, rather than borrowing theories from elsewhere,” said Nonaka.
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