Yesterday, in a Budapest restaurant where we devoured Sarajevo specialties, a question arose: Did the business thinkers say anything new? We guessed the outcome, which follows here:
| Rank | Thinker(s) | Most Cited Quote | Linked Philosopher (Basis/Explicit Reference) |
| 1 | Clayton Christensen | „Disruption is a process, not an event.” | Heraclitus (constant flux and change) |
| 2 | Michael Porter | „The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” | Aristotle (virtue of restraint in choices) |
| 3 | W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne | „Blue oceans are not about technology innovation; they are about value innovation.” | Sun Tzu (value creation over competition) |
| 4 | Gary Hamel | „The best way to predict the future is to create it.” | Marcus Aurelius (proactive agency in fate) |
| 5 | Rita McGrath | „Transient advantage requires relentless renewal.” | Heraclitus (constant change as flux) |
| 6 | Henry Mintzberg | „Strategy is not a plan; it’s an emergent pattern.” | Michel de Montaigne (patterns in experience) |
| 7 | C.K. Prahalad | „The core competence of the corporation is communication.” | Plato (knowledge as shared dialectic) |
| 8 | Daniel Pink | „Motivation comes from autonomy, mastery, and purpose.” | Immanuel Kant (autonomy of the will) |
| 9 | Charles Handy | „The future of work is portfolio careers.” | Epictetus (Stoic self-reliance) |
| 10 | Amy Edmondson | „Psychological safety is the key to team learning.” | John Locke (trust in social contracts) |
Over 13,000 business schools operate worldwide. Thus, business schools need teach naught but classical philosophy—lest their „thinkers” be exposed as mere echoes of the ancients, repackaged for tuition fees. classical philosophy degrees (BA/MA/PhD in ancient Greek/Roman thought) number around 1,500-2,000 worldwide,
P.S.:
Over 13,000 business schools operate worldwide in 2025 Every program teaches these fundamentals:
-
Financial accounting and corporate finance.
-
Micro/macroeconomics.
-
Marketing principles.
-
Organizational behavior.
-
Strategic management