For the rest of the year, I would like to take a moment and thank the people who have had a significant impact on me as an individual.
The way they have lived their lives and their body of work has had an outsized impact on how I think about life in general and and work, in particular.
Some of these are contemporary thinkers and some of them are just a memory. Some of them are famous in their own rights and some of them are yet to be found by others. Some of them are young and some of them are old. Some of them are business leaders, some thought leaders, some sportsmen and some coaches. Some of them are artists and some spiritual leaders.
However, if we look deeply, all of them are like you and me, ordinary people who’ve had an extra-ordinary impact on me and potentially a lot of others. And once you get to know them, may be they will have a similar impact on you as well or maybe not, only time will tell.
The reason I am putting together this list and share what I have learnt from them, to thank them publicly for being a teacher and teaching me important lessons in life and in the hope that some of you might be inspired by their company and they can impact you and your life as they have impacted mine.
So, let’s get started.
10. Clayton Christensen
A book that has had a significant impact on me and kindled my life long interest in innovation in general and disruptive innovation in specific was “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by the Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen. This book and the books that followed “The Innovator’s Solution” and “The Innovator’s DNA” brought more focus. Reading all of this led me to look out for opportunities to innovate and led me on a path that has been immensely rewarding and challenging at the same time.
This interest in innovation as a topic has remained with me since then. This also led me to discover and get to know some of the people whom I consider to be my best mentors (from close and from afar). This path introduced me to Porus Munshi (I did talk about him and the influence he had on me here). This led me to read Soren Kaplan and his book on Leapfrogging.
Though I have looked upto Clay and his work, I have also publicly disagreed with some of his thinking, specially on the future of higher education. You can read that blog post here. As you will see that the higher education world is slowly seeing the value in the idea that I had proposed in 2014 🙂
This interest in innovation introduced me to the world of Design Thinking, which in turn introduced me to some of the best designers and design institutes and their work (IDEO, Frog Design, Yves Behar).
All of this culminated in me thinking deeply and writing about Innovation on my blog. Some of my most read, most appreciated and widely shared blogs are on innovation. I continue to think deeply about innovation and application of innovation in different aspects of business and life and write about it.
This lead me to the world of start-ups and product design and management as topics of interest. All this culminated in me teaching Design Thinking at the Institute of Product Leadership and engage with wonderful people (Thanks to Pinkesh Shah – the founder of the IPL).
This experience of teaching at the IPL has in turn helped me realise what I want to do for the rest of my life – Teach. Maybe this is one of the reason why it is teachers who have always had a significant impact on my and my thinking.
In this talk delivered at Google, Clay talks about the concept of Growth in general and how Innovation leads to growth.
In this short video, Clay explains the concept of “Disruptive Innovation”.
In this video, Clayton Christensen (Innovator’s Dilemma) talks with Marc Andreessen (a16z) on innovation the innovator’s dilemma.
Conclusion:
We lost Clay early last year. Though he is not alive, I am sure that he will continue to live in our minds and his thinking will survive for a long time to come.
He not only thought of innovation from a business frame but also from a frame of individuals living our lives. His book “How will you measure yourself” left a significant impact on my thinking about the purpose of my life and how will I measure if I’ve succeeded in realising that.
You can listen to him talk about this concept in a Talk he delivered at LinkedIn here.
Though I have never met Prof. Clay or even see him in person, he has had a significant impact on me, my thinking and the trajectory of my life, for which I will forever remain grateful to him and to the technology that has enabled this.
Insanely Interesting People who Influenced me: #1 Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt.
Insanely Interesting People who Influenced me: #2 Paulo Coelho.
Insanely Interesting People who Influenced me: #3 Swami Vivekananda.
Insanely Interesting People who Influenced me: #4 Seth Godin.
Insanely Interesting People who Influenced me: #5 Porus Munshi.
Insanely Interesting People who Influenced me: #6 Srinivasa Chakravarthy.
Insanely Interesting People who Influenced me: #7 Dan Ariely.
Insanely Interesting People who Influenced me: #8 His Highness – The Dalai Lama.
Insanely Interesting People who Influenced me: #9 Matt Church.
