Biography

Gary HAMEL

2007 ranking: 5

The opinionated, sometimes acerbic, voice of contemporary strategy, Gary Hamel (b. 1954) is co-author of Competing for the Future and, more recently, Leading the Revolution (2000). Hamel looks set to match Michael Porter's achievements, combining intellectual vigor and empire building zeal. He lists his most meaningful achievement as "finding a group of people crazy enough and who care enough to start company committed to upsizing rather than downsizing". Perhaps, but Hamel also brings aphoristic energy to the turgid world of management writing. Leading the Revolution includes such bon mots as
"get off the treadmill of incrementation", "heretics not prophets create revolutions" and "You can't use an old map to find new land." Not Jane Austen.

Hamel is a visiting professor at Harvard Business School and London Business School. California-based Hamel is also a consultant to major companies and chairman of Strategos, a worldwide strategic consulting company. Strategos proclaims that it is "dedicated to helping its clients get to the future first". It runs the Strategos Institute - a "client-sponsored multi-disciplinary research program" - and the Strategos Practice - "a partner not a consulting company". The selling point is the quality of the ideas and access to big hitting intellectuals - its clients include Royal Dutch/Shell, Emerson Electric and Nokia.

Hamel argues that complacency and cynicism are endemic. "Dilbert is the bestselling business book of all time. It is cynical about management. Never has there been so much cynicism," he laments. "What we need is not visionaries but activists. We need antidotes to Dilbert."

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