Entrepreneurship: Who will be the next generation of business leaders after Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and others?
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Who will most likely be the next generation of business leaders to take over the previous generation? If we refer to the previous batch of business leaders who moved industries are Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and more. Who are the new guys and why?
Here we go:
1. Elon Musk: I recently saw Mr. Musk speak at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. He said that a younger age, he saw that 3 things would revolutionize humanity in his lifetime: 1) the internet, 2) sustianable transpiration, and 3) space exploration. So, he set out to complete the audacious task of conquering all three. He co-founded PayPal and sold to eBay, earning him a fortune. He then went on to co-found the electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors, and in 2012, their flagship sedan received numerous accolades, including Motor Trend’s Car of The Year. Finally, he co-founded SpaceX and was one of the first companies leading the charge in the privatization of the US space program. Oh yeah, and he’s Chairman of SolarCity, which just went public in the fall of 2012. He may also be the first human to survive indefinitely without sleep.
2. Jack Dorsey: Not only did he co-found Twitter,but he also co-foundedSquare. And he didn’t leave one to work on the other. He’s currently Chairman of Twitter and CEO of Square. Twitter revolutionized the communications and press/media industries. Humanity has never been so connected and been able to receive loads of information worldwide almost immediately. Square is turning the credit/debit card processing industry on it’s head, and is one of the most powerful players in the digitization of currency.
3. Jeff Bezos: Amazon was founded by Bezos and is one of the more mature companies of the late 90’s tech scene. I assumed that there wasn’t many new tricks in Jeff’s hat, and that Amazon would mature, grow 2-5% / year, and live on for decades without much innovation. After all, Amazon is public, quite large with a market cap of $120 billion, and seemingly mature. But, I was dead wrong. Amazon Web Services hav revolutionzed the hosting/cloud space. Bezos was able to forecast the future accurately and took a gamble with the Kindle, which has had great success since it’s launch and played a part in disrupting the archaic book industry. Bezos is invested in many promising companies including Uber,Behance, ZocDoc., and ChaCha. Reccomnded Reading: One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com
4. Larry Page: He took back the reigns of Google in 2011, and as CEO the company’s stock price has risen by over 30%. Mr. Page has the dedicated passion for Google that only a founder can have. Complacency will never set him with him. With him back at the helm, I think Google is scratching the surface of it’s potential. See Project Glass from Google and Google driverless car. Recommended Reading: In The ‘Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives.
5. Tony Hsieh (pronounced ‘shay’): Founder & CEO of Zappos.com. Tony understands customer service on a level I have never seen before. And as Gary Vaynerchuck illustrates in his book The Thank You Economy, companies with exceptional customer service will be the ones to rise to the top. He’s also spearheading the effort to revitalize the Las Vegas downtown and create an innovative and entrepreneur mecca in Sin City. He has personally committed $600 million to the project. Check out more: Downtown Project. Recommended Reading: Tony’s book entitled Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Ian McCullough, Early phase start-up junkie.
To start, it’s worth noting that through most of the 1990’s, it was General Electric'sJack Welch that was popularly seen as the greatest business leader ever. Welch’s retirement in 2001 was perfect timing for Steve Jobs to be the “it” CEO of the 2000’s.
Although Henry Hagnäs makes a mention of him, I think that Jeff Bezos is alreadythat business leader for the moment. Bezos founded Amazon.com and started successfully building it into the first major consumer ecommerce business in the world. He started with books and then progressively expanded offerings so that they now sell pretty much EVERYTHING.
They offer third party fulfillment services, are now the dominant player in cloud hosting and web services, have a large and increasingly dominant digital media business (including a curated Android platform) and are now developing and shipping their own electronics hardware under the Kindle line of products.
If Facebook is positioning itself as the social layer of the Internet, Amazon has effectively positioned itself as the small business layer of the Internet.
Speaking of Facebook, I think another notable mention for business leaders would be Sheryl Sandberg. Mark Zuckerberg may be responsible for general direction and product vision, but by all reports it’s Sandberg that is building the business and the company.
Marc Benioff from Salesforce is also very active and has built an incredibly successful enterprise that has greatly impacted the business and technology landscape in ways that I will not enumerate here.
All of this is offered with the qualification that Larry Ellison still actually runs the tech world and has for a long time now, but since Oracle isn’t a consumer-facing company (or even a small business facing company like Salesforce) he isn’t nearly as much in the public consciousness. That’s probably fine with Larry since I’m sure he’d rather be yachting.
