Both HBR and Bain have come out with lists for 2007. Several bloggers have mentioned these reports, and a few KM bloggers have made a KM connection.
The HBR article was published in the February 2007 issue and is freely available, The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2007. The list of twenty ideas is provided by a different thinker, including Michael Schrage, Clay Shirky and David Weinberger. The full list of ideas and their authors is below the fold. "Eclectic" Bill Brantley has pointed to this article with a comment about the items that link to KM. He's keen on Ideas 1 - Accidental Influentials; 4 - Algorithms in the Attic; 15 - Act Globally, Think Locally and 17 - The Best Networks are Really Worknets (which he finds most important). From my perspective, I am also interested in the ideas about innovation: Ideas 6 (User-centered innovation), 11 (Size matters in innovation) and 19 (Ready, fire, aim).
The Bain & Company report, The Bain Consulting, Management Tools 2007: An Executive's Guide, is a (semi) annual report by Bain Director Darrell K. Rigby. The full list of items is below the fold. Rather than ideas from HBR, this report suggests 25 tools that are important to understand and have shown lasting impact for businesses. Gautam Ghosh linked to this one and suggested the following items are most interesting for him: Consumer Ethnography, Collaborative Innovation, Corporate Blogging and Knowledge Management. Obviously, it is exciting to see knowledge management and corporate blogging on the list. And it's interesting to see business process re-engineering there too. I didn't think those activities were still considered top-of-mind in the business world.
The HBR Breakthrough Ideas for 2007 are
The Accidental Influentials - Duncan J. Watts
Entrepreneurial Japan - Yoshito Hori
Brand Magic: Harry Potter Marketing - Frédéric Dalsace, Coralie Damay, and David Dubois
Algorithms in the Attic - Michael Schrage
The Leader from Hope - Harry Hutson and Barbara Perry
An Emerging Hotbed of User-Centered Innovation - Eric von Hippel
Living with Continuous Partial Attention - Linda Stone
Borrowing from the PE Playbook - Michael C. Mankins
When to Sleep on It - Ap Dijksterhuis
Here Comes XBRL - Robert G. Eccles, Liv Watson, and Mike Willis
Innovation and Growth: Size Matters - Geoffrey B. West
Conflicted Consumers - Karen Fraser
What Sells When Father Knows Best - Phillip Longman
Business in the Nanocosm - Rashi Glazer
Act Globally, Think Locally - Yoko Ishikura
Seeing Is Treating - Klaus Kleinfeld and Erich Reinhardt
The Best Networks Are Really Worknets - Christopher Meyer
Why U.S. Health Care Costs Aren’t Too High - Charles R. Morris
In Defense of “Ready, Fire, Aim” - Clay Shirky
The Folly of Accountabalism - David Weinberger
The full article has several paragraphs on each item.
The Bain Consulting, Management Tools 2007: An Executive's Guide by Darrell K. Rigby
Balanced Scorecard
Benchmarking
Business Process Reengineering
Collaborative Innovation
Consumer Ethnography
Core Competencies
Corporate Blogs
Customer Relationship Management
Customer Segmentation
Growth Strategy Tools
Knowledge Management
Lean Operations
Loyalty Management Tools
Mergers and Acquisitions
Mission and Vision Statements
Offshoring
Outsourcing
RFID
Scenario and Contingency Planning
Shared Service Centers
Six Sigma
Strategic Alliances
Strategic Planning
Supply Chain Management
Total Quality Management
The full report (pdf) has two pages on each item that provides related topics, a basic description, a methodology for implementation, common uses and a selected set of references. It's a handy reference for organizations that are considering these tools in their future.