3. VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN

Vijay Govindarajan (VG) is one of the top experts on strategy and innovation. He teaches at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, but took a break in 2008 to become GE’s first Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant. He then wrote an HBR article with Jeff Immelt, “How GE is Disrupting Itself,” which is focused on the concept of reverse innovation.

His popular books include Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators and The Other Side of Innovation, which “focuses on how to turn an innovative idea into a successful commercial business.”

4. JIM COLLINS

Jim Collins wrote the classic business school book, Good to Great and its follow-up, Great by Choice. He founded a management laboratory in Boulder and taught at Stanford Business School for years.

He also wrote How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In, which “identifies five sequential stages of decline which if understood can help managers avoid decline.”

5. MICHAEL PORTER

Harvard Business School professor and co-founder of the Monitor Group Michael Porter is considered thefather of modern corporate strategy. Thinkers50 reports that: His seminal Harvard Business Review article “How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy,” (March/April 1979) introduced the Five Forces model for analyzing competitive position in an industry. His first widely read book Competitive Strategy, which followed soon after the 1979 article, is now in its 63rd imprint.

From investigating corporate competition, Porter moved on to examine competition between nations in his book The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990). He arrived at the Diamond Framework for National Competitive Advantage as a tool to help explain why some nations achieve greater productivity and higher standards of living than others.

He co-wrote Redefining Health Care, and lately has examined “competition and environmental sustainability, and competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility, and proposed the concept of shared value, arguing that firms should generate value for society as well as shareholders.”

6. ROGER MARTIN

Roger Martin is best known for his book, The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking— which looks at how integrative thinking can solve complex problems. He’s also advocated for companies to focus on design in The Design of Business, and contrasted the “real” and “expectations” markets that led to the 2008 crash in Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes and What Capitalism can Learn from the NFL.

He’s dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Canada.

7. MARSHALL GOLDSMITH

Marshall Goldsmith created the “360-degree feedback” technique — which helps teams and corporations become more transparent, and ultimately, more effective.He’s written tons of books, including The Leader of the Future and MOJO: How to Get It, How to Keep It, and How to Get It Back If You Lose It — which is based on “the moment when we do something that’s purposeful, powerful, and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it” (via Thinkers50).

He’s an executive coach with Marshall Goldsmith Group and teaches at the top business schools in the world, including Dartmouth’s Tuck.

8. MARCUS BUCKINGHAM

If you’ve ever used a “StrengthsFinder” personal assessment tool, you can thank Marcus Buckingham. He wrote Now, Discover Your Strengths and First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, and other self-help books.He helped revolutionize the idea of focusing on strengths — and not trying to be something you’re not.

His latest book is StandOut.

9. DON TAPSCOTT

Don Tapscott is “one of the world’s leading authorities on innovation, media, globalization and the economic and social impact of technology on business and society,” according to Thinkers50. He wrote one of the first books about how the Internet would completely change business, called The Digital Economy, in 1995. He also wrote the Paradigm Shift, and a ton of other management books, including Growing Up Digital,Digital Capital, The Naked Corporation and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, which was the top management book in the U.S. in 2007.

He teaches at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and his latest work isMacrowikinomics: Rebooting Business.

10. MALCOLM GLADWELL

Award-winning New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell was named one of Time’s most influential people in 2005 after publishing The Tipping Point, which looks at how small things make a huge difference, andBlink, which considers how split-second decisions and perceptions affect our worldview — through a phenomenon he calls “thin slicing.”Outliers, another a bestseller, discusses why some people become hugely successful, and others don’t.

In this amazing world we live in today, many of us are culprits for taking everyday things for granted. Do you ever stop and wonder why things are the way they are and how they came to be?

Well, many things are deliberate creations to make our lives easier and to save time but some of these creations came about accidentally and are now things we could not imagine living without.

I have come up with a list of top 7 life changing inventions that where created by mistake. Enjoy! ~ Dean Kosage

7 ACCIDENTAL YET SUCCESFUL INVENTIONS:

1. POST-IT NOTES

Inventor: Spencer Silver, a researcher in 3M Laboratories

What he was trying to make: A strong adhesive

How it was created: While working away, Silver created an adhesive that was actually weaker than what already existed. It stuck to objects but could be pulled off easily without leaving a mark. Years later a colleague spread the substance on little pieces of paper to mark his place in his choir hymn book, and the idea was born.

We all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and a good healthy breakfast fuels our body’s for the day ahead! Corn Flakes is a widely known cereal that a lot of us have come to love. You would never think leaving a pot of boiled grain on the stove for a few days by accident is how Corn Flakes came about. But it is!

The Kellogg Brothers, John and Will were trying to make a pot of boiled grain and they accidentally left the pot on the stove for a few days. The mixture turned moldy though what remained was dry and thick. Through further experimentation, they eliminated the mold part and created Corn Flakes.

Lighting up the sky, bringing people together in celebration ‘ Fireworks’ are a magical creation that are enjoyed all over the world. This is all thanks to an unknown cook in China!

A cook in China whose name is unknown, loved experimenting with food. One day of experimenting in his kitchen lead to the discovery of fireworks.

Mixing together common kitchen items (common 2000 years ago) charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter, the cook then compressed these ingredients into a bamboo tube and when heated up, it exploded, causing the birth or fireworks!

4. MICROWAVE OVENS

After a day of work sometimes it’s easier to heat up left over dinner in the microwave then cook a new meal. This wouldn’t be possible if Percy Spencer didn’t accidentally come across this discovery.

Percy Spencer was an engineer who was infamous for his left of center research. While Conducting a radar-related research project with a new vacuum tube he created, he came across something amazing.

During one of his experiments, Spencer realized that the candy bar in his pocket began to melt! He then put popcorn into the machine and when it started to pop, he knew he had created a revolutionary device.

5. PACEMAKER

Making life a lot safer and possible for many who suffer from heart disease throughout the world, “the pacemaker’ is a lifesaving and changing invention that was created through research for something completely different.

John Hopps was an electrical engineer and was conducting research on hypothermia and how the use of radio frequency heating could possibly restore the body’s natural temperature.

During his experiment, Hopps made a remarkable discovery realizing that when a heart stopped beating due to cooling, it could be started again by artificial stimulation. This discovery led to the pacemaker.

6. PENICILLIN

A widely used ant biotic, “Penicillin” is depended on by millions when a headache strikes and who would have known that it was a fluke that led Scientist Alexander Fleming to its discovery!

In an obsessive search for a ‘wonder drug’ that could cure diseases, it wasn’t until one day when he threw his experiment away that he found what it was he was looking for.

Fleming had noticed that a contaminated petri dish that he had thrown away was doing something quite remarkable. A mold that was living in this petri dish was dissolving all of the bacteria around it. When the mold was grown on its own, Fleming learned that it contained a powerful antibiotic which he named ‘Penicillin’

A common and fun childhood favorite “the slinky” was invented by Inventor; Richard Jones.

Richard was a naval engineer who was trying to design a meter to monitor power on naval battleships. One day when working with the tension springs, one of them fell to the floor and to Richard’s surprise, the spring kept bouncing from place to place after it hit the ground. This moment was when the Slinky was born.