Lynda Gratton to Receive Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award

PRESS RELEASE
Monday 15 September 2025

LONDON – Thinkers50, the global ranking of management thinkers, today announced that Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice at London Business School (LBS), is to be the recipient of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented at the Thinkers50 London Summit & Awards Gala at the Guildhall on 3 November, when Lynda will address 700 of the world’s leading management thinkers and practitioners.

‘The Lifetime Achievement Award is given to someone who has had a long-term impact on the way people think about and practice management,’ explains Thinkers50 co-founder Des Dearlove. ‘Lynda Gratton has been a fixture in the Thinkers50 Ranking since 2011 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2024.’

Adds Thinkers50 co-founder Stuart Crainer: ‘The very first Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Charles Handy at the Thinkers50 Awards Gala by Lynda, and we are delighted to honour her own work 14 years later. Lynda’s in-depth research and insights on the future of work and how organisations can have a significant, positive impact on the world resonate now more than ever.’

Having featured continuously in the Thinkers50 Ranking since 2011, in 2024 Lynda was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame and in 2025 her book, The New Long Life (with Andrew Scott), was selected as a Thinkers50 all-time Management Classic. 

As a psychologist, Lynda has long been intrigued by the relationship between people and organisations and her career has been dedicated to understanding more about this complex bond. At LBS, she designed the Human Resource Strategy in Transforming Companies programme and has led it for over 20 years. She founded the advisory practice HSM Advisory and since 2008 has led the Future of Work by HSM, which has brought together executives from more than 100 companies to imagine the future.

Lynda has served as a Fellow of the World Economic Forum at Davos and co-chaired the WEF Council on Work, Wages and Job Creation. She was a member of the advisory board of Japan’s Prime Minister Abe, received the Tata prize in India, was named as the annual Fellow of NAHR, and received the CCL prize in the US. Lynda has also been awarded the AHRI prize in Australia and the Best Teacher Award at London Business School.

Her ten books have sold over a million copies and have been translated into more than 20 languages. They include: 

• Redesigning Work: How to Transform Your Organization and Make Hybrid Work for Everyone (Management on the Cutting Edge) (MIT Press, 2022)
• The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World (with Andrew Scott, Bloomsbury, 2020) 
• The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity (with Andrew Scott, Bloomsbury, 2016) – shortlisted for the FT Business Book of the Year
• The Key: How Corporations Succeed by Solving the World’s Toughest Problems (McGraw-Hill, 2014) – the CMI Management Book of the Year
• The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here (Collins, 2011) – a Business Book of the Year in Japan
• Glow: How You Can Radiate Energy, Innovation, and Success (Berrett-Koehler, 2009) 
• Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organizations Buzz with Energy – And Others Don’t (Berrett-Koehler, 2007)
• The Democratic Enterprise: Liberating Your Business With Freedom, Flexibility and Commitment (FT Press, 2004)
• Living Strategy: Putting People at the Heart of Corporate Purpose (FT Prentice Hall, 2000)
• Strategic Human Resource Management: Corporate Rhetoric and Human Reality (Oxford University Press, 1999)

An interview with Lynda on being inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame: watch/read here.

LYNDA’S BIO

About Thinkers50

Thinkers50 is the world’s most reliable resource for identifying, ranking, and sharing the leading management ideas of our age. Since 2001, the prestigious Thinkers50 Ranking of Management Thinkers has been published every two years. 

Together with the presentation of the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards, which recognise the very best in management thinking and practice, the new ranking is announced at the biennial Thinkers50 London Summit & Awards Gala in London, described by The Financial Times as the “Oscars of management thinking.”

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