Gary Hamel, author of The 100 Best Select Competing For The Future, has a blog on the Wall Street Journal site called Management 2.0.

In his latest entry, Hamel writes about the small fraction of people who actually read books, producing back of the napkin calculations to support the infinitesimal percentages. He concludes writing another business book is not in his future.

BUT, if he did, he says it would be about adaptability, going as far as creating a table of contents for this forever-to-go unwritten tome.

The first three chapters are:

-CHAPTER 1: Anticipation.

It’s hard to out-run the future if you don’t see it coming.

-CHAPTER 2: Intellectual Flexibility.

To change an organization you must first change minds.

-CHAPTER 3: Strategic Variety

To give up the bird in the hand you must first see a flock in the bush.

Hamel says in the final three chapters will be in his next post and ends with the question:

What’s the one thing your company could do to lessen the gravitational pull of the past?

Great question for the disruptive times in which we live.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday had a major feature titled "New Breed of Business Gurus Rises." The article provides a ranking of the thought leaders in business today. The ranking system is based on the 2003 book What's the Big Idea? : Creating and Capitalizing on the Best New Management Thinking by Thomas Davenport. Davenport compiled the rankings using data from Google mentions, Lexus-Nexus media hits, and academic citations.

The methodology creates a systematic way of measuring popularity, but it seems problematic. Take the case of Bill Gates at #3 on the list. For the man who created Microsoft, people are constantly talking about him in the media, online, and in academia. It seems a stretch that business people look to Gates for advice.

Outside of Gates, the folks at the top are no huge surprise to folks who follow business books. Gary Hamel, Tom Friedman, Gates, Malcolm Galdwell, and Howard Gardner round out the top five. Below is a list of the gurus with their 2008 rankings and one of their noteworthy books:

There are some gurus listed here who we have not given much attention to. Anybody read much on Hofstede or Nonaka? We will do some research as well.

P.S. Rebecca also has a post on the side conversation going on at wsj.com about the lack of women on the list.

"There are always two parties, the party of the past and the party of the future; the establishment and the movement."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in the paperback edition of Competing for the Future,

Business authors make prominent appearances in a number of magazines this month.

Titled "Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency", Wired Magazine profiles the author and Getting Things Done in the greatest detail I have seen in the major media. Allen has a huge following in the tech community which plays perfectly to Wired's core audience. If you are new to the cult, this is a must read.

Gary Hamel of Competing For The Future fame has a new book out from Harvard Business School Press called The Future of Management. The premise of the book, which is summarized nicely in a Fortune Magazine piece, is that the practice of management hasn't kept up with the times, but the stand-out companies of today (Google, Whole Foods, Gore) are leading the way into a new era.

Finally, Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the author of Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future, wrote a piece for Portfolio Magazine. Titled Big Green Machines, the article summarizes the automotive players and the energy-reducing technologies they are betting on.