Every two years, the Thinkers50 publishes their definitive list of management thinkers. Here are the results for 2011. To check out  classic HBR content from this year’s winners, please click here.

Clayton M. Christensen is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation and growth.

Christensen is the bestselling author of a number of books including his seminal work, The Innovator’s Dilemma  (1997) which received the Global Business Book Award for the best business book of the year; The Innovator’s Solution (2003); Seeing What’s Next (2004); Disrupting Class (2008), which looks at the root causes of why schools struggle and offers solutions; The Innovator’s Prescription (2009), which examines how to fix the US healthcare system; The Innovators’ DNA  (2011); and The Innovative University (2011).

Christensen and his writings have won a number of awards, including five McKinsey Awards for articles published in the Harvard Business Review.

In 2000, Christensen founded Innosight, a consulting firm that uses his theories to help companies create new growth businesses. Christensen is also the founder of Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank whose mission is to apply his theories to vexing societal problems such as healthcare and education.

Please click here to see and hear  him explain disruptive innovation.

To read his McKinsey Award-winning article, “How Will You Measure Your Life?,” please click here.