Global Gurus

Senapathy Gopalakrishnan ologies, a global consulting and IT services company based in India. Kris is the President of the Confederation of Indian Industry CII National Council and on the Board of Governors at the Indian Institute of Management IIM Bangalore as well.Formerly he was the chairman of the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore India. Also he is the vice chairman of the Board for Information Technology Education Standards BITES set up by the government of Karnataka. In 1981 Gopalakrishnan along with his six other entrepreneurs co-founded Infosys. On 5 April 2013 he was elected as the president of the industry body Confederation of Indian Industry CII for the year 2013 14.As recognition of his business contribution for Indian society the government honored him with Padma Bhushan award. Occasionally he speaks for young entrepreneurs with a view to developing them as management professionals.

Pankaj Ghemawat is the Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School and Global Professor of Management and Strategy at the Stern School of Business at New York University, where he also serves as Director of the Center for the Globalization of Education and Management. Between 1983 and 2008, he was on the faculty at the Harvard Business School where, in 1991, he became the youngest person in the school’s history to be appointed a full professor. Ghemawat was also the youngest “guru” included in the guide to the greatest management thinkers of all time published in 2008 by The Economist. Ghemawat’s books include Commitment, Games Businesses Play, Strategy and the Business Landscape and Redefining Global Strategy. IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano described the latter book as “an important strategic guidebook for leaders of the 21st century globally integrated enterprise… [with an] analytic framework that is both visionary and pragmatic – aware of the broader historic trajectories of globalization, but grounded in the real kinds of decisions business leaders have to make.”

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, is the founder and CEO of the Center for Talent Innovation, and the founder of Hewlett Consulting Partners LLC. The co-director of the Women’s Leadership Program at the Columbia Business School, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Association. An economist with 20 years of experience in global talent management, Hewlett has particularly focused on the “power of difference” and the challenges and opportunities faced by women, minorities and other previously excluded groups. She has forged a signature style of enquiry which blends hard data and rigorous analysis with concrete solutions and on-the-ground action. Hewlett is the author of 11 Harvard Business Review articles and 12 critically acclaimed books, including When the Bough Breaks (winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award); Off-Ramps and On-Ramps; Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets; Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor (named one of the ten best business books of 2013 by the Globe and Mail); and Executive Presence (an Amazon “Best Book of the Month,” June 2014). In 2014 she was recognized as the Most Influential International Thinker by HR magazine and won the Google Global Diversity award. Her writings have appeared in the New York Times,

Dr. Nirmalya Kumar is Professor of Marketing and Director of Aditya Birla India Centre at London Business School. He has previously taught at Harvard Business School, IMD (Switzerland) and Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Management). As an author, Nirmalya has written six books, five of which are published by Harvard Business Press: Marketing as Strategy (2004), Private Label Strategy (2007), Value Merchants (2007), India’s Global Powerhouses (2009), and India Inside (2012). Brand Breakout, his latest book is published by Palgrave. Nirmalya is an outlier among marketing professors, having accomplished the rare feat of publishing six articles each in both the Journal of Marketing Research (the premier journal for marketing academics) and the Harvard Business Review (the premier journal for business practice). His publications have attracted more than 10,000 citations on Google Scholar.
As a consultant, coach, and conference speaker, Nirmalya has worked with more than 50 Fortune 500 companies in 60 different countries. He has served on several boards of directors, and is currently independent director on UltraTech Cements, a 10 billion dollar market cap firm.

Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School. She is also a Director of Research at the School. Originally educated and employed as a chemist, Dr. Amabile received her Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University in 1977. Her research investigates how life inside organizations can influence people and their performance. Originally focusing on individual creativity, Dr. Amabile’s research expanded to encompass individual productivity, team creativity, and organizational innovation. This 35-year program of research on how the work environment can influence creativity and motivation yielded a theory of creativity and innovation; methods for assessing creativity, motivation, and the work environment; and a set of prescriptions for maintaining and stimulating innovation. Dr. Amabile’s current research program focuses on the psychology of everyday work life: how events in the work environment influence subjective experience (“inner work life”) and performance (creativity, productivity, and commitment to the work).