Smith's Anil Gupta Named to Thinkers50

For a second consecutive time, Anil K. Gupta, the Michael D. Dingman Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship for the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, has been named to Thinkers50 -- widely recognized as the first, and definitive, compilation of the world’s 50 foremost business thinkers.

The list is published every two years since 2001 by British business consultants and authors Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove. They tout the compilation as “the essential guide to which business thinkers and ideas are in – and which have been consigned to business history.”

The organizers unveiled the 2015 edition – topped by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter – on Nov. 9 in London as part of a black tie gala billed the “Oscars of Management Thinking” awards, where Gupta, at No. 47, participated in a panel discussion about “growing income inequality in the world."

Gupta was selected through a combination of objective metrics and input from an international team of advisers, including Crainer and Dearlove. The criteria begins with relevance of ideas, research rigor, presentation of ideas, accessibility/dissemination of ideas and international outlook. Candidates are further evaluated according to originality, impact and practicality of ideas; business sense; and power to inspire.

“Anil’s Thinkers50 staying power reaffirms his foremost expertise of business strategy, globalization, and entrepreneurship and innovation, said Smith School Dean Alex Triantis. “Also a master educator, he inspires students and is reflective of the quality of our faculty.”

Gupta's recent book “The Silk Road Rediscovered” (Wiley, 2014) -- coauthored with Haiyan Wang, MBA ’95 and Girija Pande -- reveals how Indian and Chinese companies are becoming globally stronger by winning in each other's markets. Among five other books, "Getting China and India Right” (Wiley, 2009) has been recognized as the first strategic guide for multinational corporations who are contemplating expanding into both China and India. In September, the Los Angeles Times tapped Gupta for insight into the ramifications of the India and China heads of state meetings with U.S. political and industry leaders. Thinkers50 India has also listed Gupta as among the best of management thinkers across India and the Indian diaspora, and in 2010, Economist magazine identified Gupta as one of the world’s “rising superstars” in the area of innovation in emerging economies.

Gupta is one of just three professors in the world to be elected by academic peers as a Lifetime Fellow of the most prestigious bodies in his field: Academy of Management, Strategic Management Society and Academy of International Business. He also is a regular contributor to World Economic Forum summits including the annual meeting in Davos and the regional meetings in China, India and the Middle East.

Dearlove and Crainer, who edit the Financial Times Handbook of Management, described in a press release the philosophy behind Thinkers50: “How we view business and how business is practiced is changing, The ideas of the people featured in the Thinkers50 ranking make a difference on the factory floor and in the boardrooms of the world. In business today, ideas matter because they can be the difference between success and failure.”