Foreign Policy magazine just published their list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2010 who most influenced the global marketplace. A very worthwhile article that I would recommend reading— you can read the report here.
The report provides an overview for each person and their achievements and thinking that led to their inclusion. Also, the results of a survey of intriguing global questions asked and responded to by the majority of the recipients is a must read. Additionally, a book list of the top 20 books recommended by the Top Thinkers is a great resource for all readers of the article (Fault Lines by Raghuram Rajan is the # 1 recommended book).
While creating a list of this sort is inherently difficult and always ripe for criticism, Foreign Policy is a reputable publication that has the credentials to offer such a list to the public at large. Given that, I do believe it is worth learning more about all of those listed, many whom I’m not familiar with. While those included are all reputable and worthy of inclusion, some notable exclusions per conventional wisdom are Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2010, and Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks; like him or dislike him; the driver of unparalleled international discussion about journalistic standards.
As I looked through the list, I first wanted to do some categorization to see what portion of the list came from the US vs outside of the US and what percentage of the list were politicians versus other fields. Here are two charts along those lines:
(Note: there are actually more than 100 individuals on the list, in a few instances, FP has grouped 2 or more individuals into a single slot in the Top 100 for working together on a single project or having independent, but similar impact on a particular topic—there were 121 individuals in their Top 100 list).
- The regional mix was heavily dominated by traditional Western powers US and Europe at 77% of the list; the emerging BRIC powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China) represented 9% of the list.
- 61% of the list were located in the US, followed by Europe at 16% . China came in at 5% and India at 2%. You’d expect those regions to have an increasing % of the list in the coming years, while Europe and US would have a declining %.
- The functional mix was much more distributed than the regional mix with Political figures representing the most common role at 27%. I considered anyone who was working in a government role for any country in the Political category, whether they were focused on internal or foreign affairs issues for their country.
- At 19%, the large amount of Economics related members of the list illustrate the ongoing economic turmoil and change in the world and the continued dialogue to make sense of this turmoil and how to improve the economy.
- At 15%, the high proportion of Activists relate to recognition of non-government people who are trying to improve the world in areas such as poverty, human rights, governance, through non-profit or independent organizations.
Below you’ll see the full list of the Top 100, led by the amazing philanthropy of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Links to each of the global thinkers Wikipedia page is included to learn more about them, plus the link at the beginning of this post has the link to the Foreign Policy article where you can flip through each members page to read more about their accomplishments.
1. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates
for stepping up as the world’s states falter.
Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway | Omaha, Neb.
Co-chair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation | Seattle
2. Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Robert Zoellick
for steely vision at a moment of crisis.
IMF managing director | Washington
World Bank president | Washington
3. Barack Obama
for charting a course through criticism.
President | Washington
for holding the world’s economic fate in his hands.
Governor, People’s Bank | China
5. Ben Bernanke
for owning the U.S. economy, no matter what it takes.
Chairman, Federal Reserve | Washington
6. Celso Amorim
for transforming Brazil into a global player.
Foreign minister | Brazil
for being the brains behind Turkey’s global reawakening.
Foreign minister | Turkey
for taking a demotion to save a war.
Commanding U.S. general | Afghanistan
9. Robert Gates
for transforming U.S. military might for the 21st century.
Defense secretary | Washington
10. Angela Merkel
for leading Europe through the recession with Teutonic resolve.
Chancellor | Germany
11. Michael Bloomberg and Feisal Abdul Rauf
for reminding a divided country that Muslims are Americans too.
Mayor | New York
Imam, Cordoba Initiative | New York
12. Nouriel Roubini
for seeing the roots of the next crisis in the current one.
Economist | New York
13. Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton
for proving that you don’t need to be president to act presidential.
Former president | New York
Secretary of State | Washington
14. Steven Chu
for his dogged efforts to keep America innovating.
Energy secretary | Washington
15. George Soros
for proving it’s not what you make that counts — it’s who you give it to.
Philanthropist | New York
16. Liu Xiaobo
for bearing the flame of 1989 into a new generation.
Political prisoner | China
17. Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs
for reinventing reading.
CEO, Amazon | Seattle
CEO, Apple | Cupertino, Calif.
for dragging India out of its global nonalignment.
National security advisor | India
19. Ron Paul
for inspiring the thinking man’s Tea Party.
Congressman | Washington
for proving that there are second acts in public life.
Democracy activist | Egypt
21. Sergey Brin and Larry Page
for standing up to China’s bullying.
Co-founders, Google | Mountain View, Calif.
for pushing France on fiscal discipline.
Finance minister | France
23. Salam Fayyad
for bringing faith in technocracy to the Holy Land.
Prime minister | Palestine
24. Elizabeth Warren
for putting the spotlight on America’s debt binge.
White House advisor | Washington
25. Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and George Shultz
for showing that if wise men can give up on nukes, so can the rest of us.
Elder statesmen | New York, Washington, Palo Alto, Calif.
26. Paul Krugman and Raghuram Rajan
for their spirited debate over the roots of the global financial meltdown.
Economist, Princeton University | Princeton, N.J.
Economist, University of Chicago | Chicago
27. Fareed Zakaria
for chronicling the rise of the rest.
Editor at large, Time | New York
28. Shai Agassi
for driving to make electric cars a reality.
CEO, Better Place | Palo Alto, Calif.
29. Paul Collier
for showing that natural resources don’t have to be a curse.
Economist, Oxford University | Britain
30. Joseph Stiglitz
for his full-throated defense of fiscal stimulus.
Economist, Columbia University | New York
31. David Cameron
for showing what the new politics of austerity really mean.
Prime minister | Britain
32. Cécile Duflot, Monica Frassoni, Renate Künast, Marina Silva
for taking Green mainstream.
Green Party leaders | France, Belgium, Germany, Brazil
33. Thomas Friedman
for trying to inspire a new Greatest Generation.
Columnist, New York Times | Washington
34. John Kerry and Richard Lugar
for being the adults on Capitol Hill.
Senators | Washington
35. Paul Farmer
for showing the world what to do, and what not to do, in Haiti.
Medical anthropologist, Harvard University | Boston
for applying a stateswoman’s vision to gender equality.
Undersecretary-general, U.N. Women | New York
37. Martin Wolf
for dishing out the economic advice no one wants to hear.
Columnist, Financial Times | Britain
38. Esther Duflo
for putting hard numbers to a bleeding-heart pursuit.
Economist, MIT | Cambridge, Mass.
39. Mohamed Nasheed
for putting a face — his own — on the peril of climate change.
President | Maldives
for driving a stake through the dark heart of Iran’s theocracy.
Religious scholar | Washington
41. Mehdi Karroubi
for keeping the spirit of the Green Movement alive.
Cleric | Iran
42. Agnes Klingshirn and Peter Scott
for helping the world breathe easier.
Aid worker | Germany
Stove designer | Seattle
43. Nandan Nilekani
for proving that India can be not only democratic, but efficient.
Entrepreneur | India
44. Zheng Bijian
for trying to keep China’s rise peaceful.
Geostrategist | China
45. Mohamed El-Erian
for reminding us just how bad things could get.
CEO, Pimco | Newport Beach, Calif.
for forging a code of ethics to fit a globalized world.
Philosopher, Princeton University | Princeton, N.J.
47. Jacques Attali
for not letting a crisis go to waste.
Economic advisor | France
48. Robert Shiller
for bringing economics (and economists) down to earth.
Economist, Yale University | New Haven, Conn.
49. Vaclav Smil
for keeping the West honest about its plight.
Environmental scientist, University of Manitoba | Canada
50. Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart
for keeping the focus on governance, not just guns.
Co-founders, Institute for State Effectiveness | Afghanistan, Washington
51. Ahmed Rashid
for being the world’s eyes and ears in one of its most volatile regions.
Journalist | Pakistan
52. Mo Ibrahim
for holding Africa to high standards.
Founder, Mo Ibrahim Foundation | Britain
53. Miles Morland and Rosa Whitaker
for seeing Africa as the land of opportunity.
Investor | Britain
Consultant | Washington
54. Paul Romer
for developing the world’s quickest shortcut to economic development.
Economist, Stanford University | Palo Alto, Calif.
for refusing to surrender in the darkest of times.
Author | Washington
56. John Bolton
for not giving up.
Senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute | Washington
57. Nathan Myhrvold
for making a business model out of solving the world’s big problems.
Entrepreneur | Bellevue, Wash.
58. Sendhil Mullainathan and Richard Thaler
for bringing behavioral economics out of the ivory tower.
Economist, Harvard University | Cambridge, Mass.
Economist, University of Chicago | Chicago
59. Ory Okolloh
for teaching us how to crowdsource emergency relief.
Executive director, Ushahidi | Kenya
60. Fan Gang
for articulating how China can become more than the world’s factory floor.
Director, National Economic Research Institute | China
61. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
for her staunch defense of Western values.
Scholar, American Enterprise Institute | Washington
62. Tariq Ramadan
for remaining convinced Islam can make peace with the West.
Philosopher, Oxford University | Britain
63. Vinod Khosla
for betting that green technology can be profitable.
Venture capitalist | Menlo Park, Calif.
for depicting the realities of tyranny — so as to end it.
Author | Peru
65. Bjorn Lomborg
for questioning whether we’re going after climate change right.
Political scientist | Denmark
66. Sabina Alkire
for showing that poverty is about more than money.
Economist, Oxford University | Britain
67. Clay Shirky
for encouraging the world to use its “cognitive surplus” for good.
Web guru | New York
68. Malcolm Gladwell
for making ideas stick.
Staff writer, New Yorker | New York
69. Steven Pinker
for seeing that we’re getting smarter.
Psychologist, Harvard University | Cambridge, Mass.
70. John Arquilla
for envisioning the future of warfare.
Military theorist, Naval Postgraduate School | Monterey, Calif.
71. Louise Arbour
for putting the world on notice.
CEO, International Crisis Group | Belgium
72. Atul Gawande
for giving us the tools to make sense of an information-addled world.
Surgeon, Brigham and Women’s Hospital | Boston
73. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff
for seeing the financial future in the past.
Economist, University of Maryland | College Park, Md.
Economist, Harvard University | Cambridge, Mass.
74. Michèle Flournoy and Anne-Marie Slaughter
for setting the tone of how the United States engages with the world.
Policy planning chiefs, Defense and State Departments | Washington
75. Aung San Suu Kyi
for never giving up on democracy.
Dissident | Burma
76. Richard Clarke
for scary prescience about the great threat of our time — again.
Consultant | Washington
77. Helene Gayle
for understanding that poverty and disease can’t be fought separately.
CEO, CARE USA | Atlanta
78. Lester Brown
for explaining the connection between planet and plate.
President, Earth Policy Institute | Washington
for making the best of Greece’s worst year.
Prime minister | Greece
80. Niall Ferguson
for showing that economic crises are about a lot more than the economy.
Historian, Harvard University | Cambridge, Mass.
81. Ethan Zuckerman
for showing us how small our online worlds are — and how big they can be.
Founder, Global Voices | Lanesborough, Mass.
82. Hu Shuli
for enlarging the space for debate in China.
Editor, Century Weekly | China
83. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler
for proving that social networks are more than tweets and pokes.
Sociologist, Harvard University | Boston
Political scientist, University of California | San Diego
84. Kamal Kar
for doing the world’s dirty work.
Sanitation expert | India
for moving her country away from a troubled past.
President | Liberia
86. Han Han
for channeling rising China’s restlessness.
Blogger and novelist | China
87. Mozah bint Nasser al-Missned
for championing education in the Arab world.
First lady | Qatar
88. Daron Acemoglu
for showing that freedom is about more than markets.
Economist, MIT | Cambridge, Mass.
89. David Grossman
for using fiction to tell the truth about Israel’s open wounds.
Novelist | Israel
90. Martha Nussbaum
for reminding us what we lose in the rush for global competitiveness.
Philosopher, University of Chicago | Chicago
91. Edwidge Danticat
for affirming the moral necessity of art, even in the worst of circumstances.
Writer | Miami
for being the voice of a new Asian century.
Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy | Singapore
93. Malalai Joya
for embodying an independent-minded Afghanistan.
Activist | Afghanistan
for keeping NATO relevant.
Former secretary of state | Washington
95. Carl Bildt
for telling Europe what it doesn’t want to hear.
Foreign minister | Sweden
96. Bruce Ackerman
for sounding the alarm about American radicalism.
Historian, Yale University | New Haven, Conn.
97. Unity Dow
for proving that the rule of law can be a force for change.
Judge | Botswana
for teaching America how to be a hegemon on the cheap.
Political scientist, Johns Hopkins University | Washington
99. Tarja Halonen
for combating every sort of inequality.
President | Finland
100. Ian Buruma
for insisting that liberalism is more than a fighting faith.
Writer | New York
Dear Apurva,
well done at writing this article on the special issue from FP! I like to translate into graphs and found everything I needed in your article. It will help me line up discussion topics for my Chinese club. I will use the top book list, percentage of top global thinkers per nationality and per role to discuss contemporary trends in China.
Regards,
Livia Macedo
Thanks Livia for your comment– I’m glad you found it useful. I would love to stay in touch and hear how you used it for your Chinese club and the feedback the club gave when discussing the Top 100 list and the related contemporary trends as it applies to China