Who are the most influential thinkers on the planet? That’s a question that you might imagine ought to be straightforward to determine, given the recent advances in the study of social networks and how information flows around the globe.

And yet, while this network approach has been widely used to rank websites, successful sports stars, business leaders and so on, there has been little work on influential thinkers.  “The most important thought leaders and trends shaping our society have not been subjected so far to any truly systematic analysis,” say Karin Frick at the GDI Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute in Switzerland and a couple of pals.

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