Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Business,

#1

W. Edwards Deming

W. Edwards Deming

#187

Overall Influence

1903 - 1993 (90 years)

William Edwards Deming was an American business theorist, composer, economist, industrial engineer, management consultant, statistician, and writer. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematical physics, he helped develop the sampling techniques still used by the United States Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He is also known as the father of the quality movement and was hugely influential in post-WWII Japan. He is best known for his theories of management.

#2

Henry Mintzberg

Henry Mintzberg

#543

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Henry Mintzberg is a Canadian academic and author on business and management. He is currently the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he has been teaching since 1968.

#3

Jamie Dimon

#538

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

James Dimon is an American billionaire business executive and banker, who has been the chairman and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase since 2005. He was previously on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dimon was included in Time magazine's 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2011 lists of the world's 100 most influential people. Forbes estimated his net worth at $1.6 billion as of June 2023. He serves on the board of directors of several non-profit institutions; including the Business Roundtable, the Bank Policy Institute, and the Harvard Business School. In the past he...

#4

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#324

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Lebanese-American essayist, mathematical statistician, former option trader, risk analyst, and aphorist whose work concerns problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty.

#5

Bernie Madoff

#587

Overall Influence

1938 - 2021 (83 years)

Bernard Lawrence Madoff was an American fraudster and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest known Ponzi scheme in history, worth an estimated $65 billion. He was at one time chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. Madoff's firm had two basic units: a stock brokerage and an asset management business; the Ponzi scheme was centered in the asset management business.

#6

Robert S. Kaplan

Robert S. Kaplan

#1477

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Robert Samuel Kaplan is an American accounting academic, and Emeritus Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School. He is known as co-creator of Balanced Scorecard. together with David P. Norton.

#7

Larry Zicklin

#1751

Overall Influence

Larry Zicklin is an American professor and businessperson. He is a former chairman of the Board of investment management firm, Neuberger Berman and a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University and Baruch College, a CUNY school.

#8

E. Jerome McCarthy

#2037

Overall Influence

1928 - 2015 (87 years)

Edmund Jerome McCarthy was an American marketing professor and author. He proposed the concept of the 4 Ps marketing mix in his 1960 book Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, which has been one of the top textbooks in university marketing courses since its publication. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Marketing, McCarthy was a "pivotal figure in the development of marketing thinking". He was also a founder, advisory board member, and consultant for Planned Innovation Institute, which was established to bolster Michigan industry. In 1987, McCarthy received the American Marketing Associ...

#9

Peter Senge

#1091

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Peter Michael Senge is an American systems scientist who is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute, and the founder of the Society for Organizational Learning. He is known as the author of the book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization .

#10

Ikujiro Nonaka

#1139

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Ikujiro Nonaka is a Japanese organizational theorist and Professor Emeritus at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy of the Hitotsubashi University, best known for his study of knowledge management.

#11

Aswath Damodaran

#3882

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Aswath Damodaran , is a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University , where he teaches corporate finance and equity valuation. Background Known as the "Dean of Valuation" due to his expertise in that subject, Damodaran is best known as the author of several widely used academic and practitioner texts on Valuation, Corporate Finance and Investment Management as well as provider of comprehensive data for valuation purposes. He is widely quoted on the subject of valuation, with "a great reputation as a teacher and authority". He has written several books on equity valuation, as well as on corporate finance and investments.

#12

Sally Blount

#3819

Overall Influence

Sally Blount is the Michael L. Nemmers Professor of Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where she is the former dean and alumna. She serves on the boards of directors for Abbott Laboratories, Ulta Beauty, and the Joyce Foundation and on advisory boards for the Aspen Institute, the Chicago Innovation Awards, the Indian School of Business, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the Fundação Dom Cabral. In 2012, she co-chaired the World Economic Forum’s conference on Latin America.

#13

Warren Bennis

#2120

Overall Influence

1925 - 2014 (89 years)

Warren Gamaliel Bennis was an American scholar, organizational consultant and author, widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of Leadership studies. Bennis was University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California.

#14

Kenneth R. Andrews

#4693

Overall Influence

1916 - 2005 (89 years)

Kenneth Richmond Andrews , was an American academic who, along with H. Igor Ansoff and Alfred D. Chandler, was credited with the foundational role in introducing and popularizing the concept of business strategy.

#15

Thomas H. Davenport

#2304

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Thomas Hayes "Tom" Davenport, Jr. is an American academic and author specializing in analytics, business process innovation, knowledge management, and artificial intelligence. He is currently the President’s Distinguished Professor in Information Technology and Management at Babson College, a Fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Co-founder of the International Institute for Analytics, and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte Analytics.

#16

David Teece

#4412

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

David John Teece is a New Zealand-born US-based organizational economist and the Professor in Global Business and director of the Tusher Center for the Management of Intellectual Capital at the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

#17

Joe Boyd

#1503

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Joe Boyd is an American record producer and writer. He formerly owned Hannibal Records. Boyd has worked on recordings of Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, The Incredible String Band, R.E.M., Vashti Bunyan, John and Beverley Martyn, Maria Muldaur, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Billy Bragg, James Booker, 10,000 Maniacs, and Muzsikás. He was also one of the founders of the highly influential nightclub venue UFO.

#18

Mary Barra

#2586

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Mary Teresa Barra is an American businesswoman who has been the chair and chief executive officer of General Motors since January 15, 2014. She is the first female CEO of a 'Big Three' automaker. In December 2013, GM named her to succeed Daniel Akerson as CEO. Prior to being named CEO, Barra was executive vice president of global product development, purchasing, and supply chain.

#19

Jeffrey Pfeffer

#4877

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Jeffrey Pfeffer is an American business theorist and the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and is considered one of today's most influential management thinkers.

#20

Edward O. Thorp

#996

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Edward Oakley Thorp is an American mathematics professor, author, hedge fund manager, and blackjack researcher. He pioneered the modern applications of probability theory, including the harnessing of very small correlations for reliable financial gain.

#21

Jagdish Sheth

#5664

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Jagdish N. Sheth is the Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University. He was a prominent member of the core team during the initial years of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, the first Indian Institute of Management. Prof. Sheth was awarded by Padma Bhushan 2020 for his work in literature & education in United States.

#22

James E. Webb

#755

Overall Influence

1906 - 1992 (86 years)

James Edwin Webb was an American government official who served as Undersecretary of State from 1949 to 1952. He was the second Administrator of NASA from February 14, 1961, to October 7, 1968. Webb led NASA from the beginning of the Kennedy administration through the end of the Johnson administration, thus overseeing each of the critical first crewed missions throughout the Mercury and Gemini programs until days before the launch of the first Apollo mission. He also dealt with the Apollo 1 fire.

#23

Laura Tyson

#4153

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Laura D'Andrea Tyson is an American economist and university administrator who is currently a Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley and a senior fellow at the Berggruen Institute. She served as the 16th Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1995 and 2nd Director of the National Economic Council from 1995 to 1996 under President Bill Clinton. Tyson was the first woman to hold each of those posts. She remains the only person to have served in both posts.

#24

Hirotaka Takeuchi

Hirotaka Takeuchi

#4036

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

is a professor of management practice in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. He co-authored The New New Product Development Game which influenced the development of the Scrum framework. Biography Takeuchi was born in 1946 and gained a B.A. from International Christian University in Tokyo, and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His early non-academic career included work at McCann-Erickson in Tokyo and San Francisco and at McKinsey & Company in Tokyo.

#25

Jay Lorsch

#7708

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Jay William Lorsch is an American organizational theorist and the Louis Kirstein Professor of Human Relations at the Harvard Business School, known for his contribution of contingency theory to the field of organizational behavior.

#26

Walter Kiechel

#7651

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Walter Kiechel III is an author and business journalist. He has served as Managing Editor of Fortune magazine and as the editorial director of Harvard Business School Publishing, producer of the Harvard Business Review. His most recent work is The Lords of Strategy, which The Wall Street Journal has described as a "clear, deft and cogent" history of the management consulting industry.

#27

Dipak C. Jain

#6089

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Dipak Chand Jain is Co-President and Global Advisor of China Europe International Business School. He previously was the Director of Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. The announcement of his appointment as Director of Sasin was made on 7 June 2014. He stepped down in 2017.

#28

Peter Tufano

#8789

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Peter Tufano was the dean of the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford until 2021 before being replaced by Sue Dopson as interim acting dean. Before moving to Oxford in 2011, he spent over three decades at Harvard University where he completed his AB in Economics, MBA and PhD in Business Economics, as well as spending 22 years on the faculty.

#29

R. Edward Freeman

#5201

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Robert Edward Freeman is an American philosopher and professor of business administration at the Darden School of the University of Virginia, particularly known for his work on stakeholder theory and on business ethics.

#30

Nitin Nohria

#7062

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Nitin Nohria is an Indian-American academic. He was the tenth dean of Harvard Business School. He is also the George F. Baker Professor of Administration. He is a former non-executive director of Tata Sons.

#31

Kevin Lane Keller

#9735

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Kevin Lane Keller is the E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He is most notable for having authored Strategic Brand Management , a widely used text on brand management. The book is focused on the "how to" and "why" of brand management, this strategy guide provides specific tactical guidelines for planning, building, measuring, and managing brand equity. He has published his research in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Consumer Research. In addition, Philip Kotler selected Keller to be his co-author on...

#32

Vijay Govindarajan

Vijay Govindarajan

#5144

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Vijay Govindarajan , popularly known as VG, is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business and Marvin Bower Fellow, 2015–16 at Harvard Business School. He is a Faculty Partner in the Silicon Valley Incubator Mach49. He worked as General Electric's innovation consultant and professor in residence from 2008 to 2010. He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author and a two-time winner of the McKinsey Award for the best article published in Harvard Business Review. VG was inducted into the Thinkers 50 Hall of Fame in 2019 for his life-long work dedicated to the field of management, strategy, and innovation.

#33

Don E. Schultz

#9471

Overall Influence

1934 - 2020 (86 years)

Don Edward Schultz was Professor Emeritus of Service at Northwestern University's Medill School. He was most notable for his research and writing on integrated marketing communications . Education and early career Schultz earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from University of Oklahoma in 1957, a master's degree in advertising from Michigan State University in 1975, and a PhD in mass media from Michigan State in 1977. Schultz began his career in publication sales and management. In 1965, he joined the firm of Tracy-Locke Advertising and Public Relations based in Dallas, Texas, where ...

#34

Charles Thomas Horngren

#10989

Overall Influence

1926 - 2011 (85 years)

Charles Thomas Horngren was an American accounting scholar and professor of accounting at Stanford University, known for his work in "pioneering modern-day management accounting." Biography Born in Milwaukee, Horngren joined the U.S. Army after high school graduation in 1946. Back in Milwaukee, he obtained his BA in accounting at the Marquette University in 1949. In 1952 he obtained his MBA from Harvard Business School, and in 1955 his PhD from University of Chicago.

#35

Paul R. Lawrence

#10824

Overall Influence

1922 - 2011 (89 years)

Paul Roger Lawrence was an American sociologist, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Harvard Business School, and consultant, known from his work with Jay W. Lorsch on "Differentiation and integration in complex organizations."

#36

Dave Ulrich

#9814

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value. He has published over 200 articles and book chapters and over 30 books. He edited Human Resource Management 1990-1999, served on editorial board of 4 other journals and on the Board of Directors for Herman Miller (16 years), has spoken to large audiences in 90 countries; performed workshops for over half of the Fortune 200; coached successful business leaders, and is a Distinguished Fellow in the National Academy of Human Resources.

#37

Bernd Schmitt

#8252

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Bernd Herbert Schmitt is a professor of international business in the marketing department at Columbia Business School, Columbia University in New York. He is known for his research, books, speaking and consulting on customer experience, customer happiness, branding, innovation and for his work in Asia on Asian markets and consumers. He wrote several influential books in these areas like Experiential Marketing, Customer Experience Management, Big Think Strategy and Happy Customers Everywhere.

#38

John Naisbitt

#3920

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

John Naisbitt was an American author and public speaker in the area of futures studies. His first book Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives was published in 1982. It was the result of almost ten years of research. It was on The New York Times Best Seller list for two years, mostly as No. 1. Megatrends was published in 57 countries and sold more than 14 million copies.

#39

Tarun Khanna

#6703

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Tarun Khanna is an Indian-born American academic, author, and an economic strategist. He is currently the Jorge Paulo Lemann professor at Harvard Business School; where he is a member of the strategy group, and the director of Harvard University’s South Asia initiative since 2010.

#40

Frank Bass

#11326

Overall Influence

1926 - 2006 (80 years)

Frank M. Bass was an American academic in the field of marketing research and marketing science. He was the creator of the Bass diffusion model that describes the adoption of new products and technologies by first-time buyers. He died on December 1, 2006.

#41

Jay R. Galbraith

#8827

Overall Influence

1939 - 2014 (75 years)

Jay R. Galbraith was an American organizational theorist, consultant and professor at the International Institute for Management Development, known for his work on strategy and organization design. Biography Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Galbraith obtained his BSc in chemical engineering in 1962 at the University of Cincinnati, and at the Indiana University Bloomington his MBA in 1964, and his PhD in Business Administration with the thesis, entitled "Motivational Determinants of Job Performance: An Empirical Study."

#42

Soumitra Dutta

#8493

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Soumitra Dutta is an Indian academic, author and entrepreneur. He is the dean of Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, having taken up the post from 1 June 2022. He was previously a professor of management, as well as the former Founding Dean, at the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University in New York. He was dean of SC Johnson College of Business from 2012 to 2018. Before his appointment to Cornell, he was the Roland Berger professor of business and technology at INSEAD.

#43

Thomas W. Malone

Thomas W. Malone

#3627

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Thomas W. Malone is an American organizational theorist, management consultant, and the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Biography Malone received his BA in applied mathematics, graduating magna cum laude from Rice University. He earned his MS in engineering-economic systems, and his Ph.D. in cognitive and social psychology, both from Stanford University.

#44

Joseph Piotroski

#12211

Overall Influence

Joseph D. Piotroski is the Robert K. Jaedicke Professor of Accounting at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and a senior fellow at the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research . Prior to joining Stanford in 2007, Piotroski was at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business .

#45

A. Parasuraman

#10952

Overall Influence

A. "Parsu" Parasuraman is an Indian-American marketing professor and author. He is the Professor and the James W. McLamore Chair in Marketing at the University of Miami. Education Parasuraman got his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras and MBA in Marketing from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in 1970 and 1972 respectively. He then proceeded to the United States where he gained a doctorate in Business Administration from Indiana University in 1975.

#46

Robert I. Sutton

Robert I. Sutton

#8856

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Robert I. Sutton is a professor of management science at the Stanford University School of Engineering and a researcher in the field of evidence-based management. He is a New York Times best-selling author.

#47

Dennis Meadows

#3471

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Dennis Lynn Meadows is an American scientist and Emeritus Professor of Systems Management, and former director of the Institute for Policy and Social Science Research at the University of New Hampshire. He is President of the Laboratory for Interactive Learning and widely known as a coauthor of The Limits to Growth.

#48

Nicolas Berggruen

Nicolas Berggruen

#6795

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Nicolas Berggruen is a US-based billionaire investor and philanthropist. Born in Paris, France, he is a dual German and American citizen. He is the co-founder and president of Berggruen Holdings, a private investment company and the co-founder and chairman of the Berggruen Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank that works to address global governance issues. In 2014, through the Institute, Berggruen launched Noema Magazine, formerly the WorldPost, a digital and print publication dedicated to exploring global issues.

#49

William Ouchi

#11568

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

William G. "Bill" Ouchi is an American professor and author in the field of business management. He is the Distinguished Professor of Management and Organizations, Sanford and Betty Sigoloff Chair in Corporate Renewal at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

#50

Richard Boyatzis

#6800

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Richard Eleftherios Boyatzis is a Greek-American organizational theorist and Distinguished University Professor in the Departments of Organizational Behavior, Psychology, and Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, Adjunct Professor in People/Organizations at ESADE, as well as HR Horvitz Professor of Family Business. He is considered an expert in the field of emotional intelligence, behavior change, and competence.

Image Attributions