The 15 most influential thinkers in business

Behind some of the world's biggest trends in business are management thinkers whose research influences powerful executives and scrappy entrepreneurs alike.

You can credit Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, for example, for sowing the seeds that became Silicon Valley's obsession with "disruption." And there are INSEAD professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, whose book "Blue Ocean Strategy" has sold 3.5 million copies and been translated into 42 languages over the past decade, making it one of the most popular business books of all time.

To honor these thought leaders, authors, and management professors, Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer started Thinkers50 in 2001, a biennial award ceremony that the Financial Times dubbed the "Oscars of management thinking." The Thinkers50 team selects its top 50 list by determining the tangible impact of the individual's ideas on the global marketplace.

We've highlighted the careers of the 15 top-ranked thinkers below, and you can find the full list at the Thinkers50's site.