Innovation comes in a variety of ways and forms, especially in 2015.
Innovation comes in a variety of ways and forms, especially in 2015. You’ll notice there’s a bit of a technology bias with our list, but as you’ll find out each person has managed to enrich our lives in a variety of ways with their unique approach to business. Presented in no particular order:
Jeff Bezos – Founder and CEO of Amazon
The poster boy of the dotcom boom in the late 90s, Bezos saw Amazon rise from humble online bookstore to one-stop shop for all your entertainment needs, ensuring that the site became the model for e-commerce growth under his visionary leadership.
With a net worth of £45.5 billion, Bezos has invested heavily in a variety of companies such as Airbnb, Basecamp, Twitter, and Uber, along with personally buying the Washington Post in 2013.
So having conquered the e-commerce world and dipped his toes in media, what’s next for Bezos? He’s currently funding Blue Origin – a space-flight start-up company which aims to open up space travel to paying customers in later years.
Elon Musk – Founder of Tesla Motors
Putting the cool into green tech, Elon Musk never seems to be out of the tech news – whether it’s the launch of the new Model X electric car which can travel 250 miles on a single charge, his involvements in the HyperLoop programme to revolutionise commuting, or acting as chairman of SolarCity, the fastest growing solar power installer, Musk seems to thrive on innovation and utilising new technology.
On top of this, Musk is also looking to the future with heavy investments in his SpaceX company – an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company which holds a contract with NASA to resupply their space stations.
Mark Zuckerberg – Founder of Facebook
Love it or hate it, you can’t deny the impact Facebook has had on our day-to-day lives. With in-excess of one billion users and revenue even bigger than that number, Zuckerberg famously conceived the idea while studying at Harvard and dropped out to focus on its development, turning it into the mammoth it is today.
As with the other innovators on the list, the buck hasn’t stopped there and Zuckerberg continues to look into new ways to invest and expand his reach and influence in an increasingly connected world. This has included the launch of Internet.org with the stated aims of providing internet access to the 5 billion people who were not connected as of the launch date.
Reed Hastings – Founder of Netflix
Netflix n chill? You know something has become part of everyday life when an entire saying sprouts up around its use – for Reed Hastings, the 40 million subscribers across the world, investment in original content, and dominating online streaming has helped him achieve this infamy.
Having originally launched Netflix in America as a flat-rate movie rental-by-mail service, the company saw astronomical growth when it introduced its worldwide streaming service in 2007 after Hastings noticed the rapid growth of YouTube across the globe.
Sergey Brin
While it might be fair to put both Sergey and fellow Google co-founder Larry Page as one entry, it is Sergey who has driven a variety of innovations and projects off the back of the search engines massive success.
Some of these ambitious endeavours aim to be truly life changing and include research and testing of driverless/autonomous vehicles which recently reached the benchmark of 500,000 miles of testing incident-free, and Calico, a company which aims to expand the human lifespan.
These are the business innovators in the here and now. But with new faces and fresh ideas springing up around increasingly important issues such as the environment and renewable energy, this list is likely to change completely in the next five years.
Nick Cooper
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