Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2022

Thinkers50 bills itself as the world’s most reliable resource for identifying, ranking, and sharing the leading management ideas of our age.  The Thinkers50 annual Radar list provides a snapshot of the 30 thinkers driving diversity, inclusivity, and equity values.  Thirteen of the 30 thinkers on this year’s list are business school professors, including the following:

Basima Tewfik – Assistant Professor of Organization Studies, MIT Sloan School of Management

• Tewfik’s main stream of research examines the psychology of the social self at work, including rethinking what we know about impostor syndrome – for which there can be upsides – and how you can decline taking on more requests at work when you have too much on your plate.
• From Tewfik’s research: “A lot of people sort of paint [imposter syndrome] as this thing that’s holding you back…there’s actually no significant difference [in competence] between those who are induced to have imposter thoughts and those who are not…all of this together makes me pretty excited…there might be this upside, and maybe we should start to think about harnessing it.”

Vanessa Bohns – Professor of Organizational Behavior and Psychology, Cornell University

• Studies help-seeking, social influence, compliance, consent, and why it’s so hard to say ‘no’; has demonstrated experimentally that it is harder for people to say ‘no’ to us than we realize, which means we have more influence than we think, for better and worse.
• Bohns recently featured her research in The Atlantic noting: “Our expectations for how quickly others expect us to respond are [often] inaccurate…we think we have to respond right away, but actually people are okay if we take our time.”

Tiona Zuzul – Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School

• Researches how leaders and organizations navigate new industries and periods of dramatic change with the potential to reshape markets. Leaders’ identity and framing – how they conceptualize and communicate ‘who they are’ and ‘what they do’ – shapes an organization’s strategy, transformation, and performance.

Loran Nordgren – Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management.

• The originator of Friction Theory, a ground-breaking methodology that explains why even the most promising innovations and change initiatives struggle to gain traction with their intended audiences – and more importantly, what to do about it.
• Nordgren describing Friction Theory: “We instinctively believe that the way to get people to say yes to our ideas is to add value, to use fuel…we often neglect the other side of the equation: the friction that opposes change.”

For the full list of thinkers, click here.  If you’re inspired by these thinkers and ready to start your business school applications, contact Admitify today!