Haas Adjunct Professor and alumnus Henry Chesbrough, PhD 97, and UC Berkeley School of Information Professor Morten Hansen made the 2013 Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers. Alumnus Ikujiro Nonaka, MBA 68, PhD 72, a top authority on knowledge creation and management, received the Thinkers50 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award this month, while Haas Lecturer Steve Blank was short-listed for a Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award.
Chesbrough, faculty director of the Haas School’s Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, ranked 37 on the Thinkers50 list and was short-listed for a Distinguished Achievement Award in the innovation category. He is known as the father of open innovation and author of several books on the subject. This is the second time in a row he has made it on the Thinkers50 biennial ranking.
Hansen, a management professor at Berkeley's School of Information who is affiliated with the Berkeley-Haas Management of Organizations Group, ranked 28 on the Thinkers50 list. His most recent book, co-authored with Jim Collins, is Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All (HarperBusiness, 2011), which made the Thinker50 Best Book Award shortlist and #2 on the New York Times Best Sellers list.
Blank was nominated for a Distinguished Achievement Award in the breakthrough idea category for his new approach to teaching entrepreneurship. Blank’s Lean LaunchPad requires students to “get out of the building” to speak with customers as they build their startups and to pivot and reiterate until they arrive at a winning concept.
Nonaka, honored Nov. 11 in London, was the second person to receive the Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame. He worked for Fuji Electric in his native Japan for nine years before coming to study business at Berkeley, where he earned an MBA and PhD. In 1997, he became the Haas School's first Xerox Distinguished Professor in Knowledge, the first professorship in the nation dedicated to the study of knowledge and its impact on business. He is a member of the Haas Hall of Fame and professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo.