1. Lady Gaga – Pop Artist
Gaga
broke through last year as a global phenomenon, musing on “disco
sticks,” channeling Madonna’s glitter-glam fashion, and cribbing
shock-rock performance notes from Alice Cooper. Gaga has done something
unprecedented, melding her inspirations with au courant dance pop and
Web savvy to build a business empire notable for both the speed of its
creation and the diversity of its platforms.
2. Eddy Cue – VP of Internet services, Apple
Steve
Jobs may own the limelight, but Eddy Cue holds the key to the Apple
kingdom. Cue runs arguably the most disruptive 21st-century Web
businesses: iTunes and the App Store, the latter of which is poised to
create a $4 billion app economy by 2012. Cue’s next campaign will be
challenging Amazon’s Kindle dominance, with the Cupertino cocktail of
the iPad and the iBook store.
3. Elizabeth Warren – Consumer advocate, Congressional Oversight Panel
By
calling the likes of Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit on the carpet,
jawboning with Jon Stewart, and pushing to create a consumer financial
protection agency, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren has taken what
could have been a paper-pushing position as chair of the Congressional
Oversight Panel on the bank bailout to the forefront of the public
conversation over financial reform.
4. Shiro Nakamura – Chief Creative Officer, Nissan
With
the zero-emissions Leaf — which goes on sale later this year and is the
first global mass-market electric car — he has tried to put his finger
on the consumer pulse and make a car that will sell. “We did not want to
make something very strange for just the niche buyer,” Nakamura said
last year. That hews to his belief that creativity at its best isn’t
about just doing whatever you want: “More designers have to understand
the values of society and the people they are creating the vehicles
for.”
5. Ryan Murphy – Creator and Producer, Glee
The
Peabody-winning Fox series Glee, his satire about a high-school show
choir, has become a ratings rock star. It’s the No. 1 show among female
teens and the top new show among women 18 to 49, and more of its
viewership is made up of 18- to 49-year-olds in households making
$100,000-plus than any other broadcast-network show.Glee has also
spawned more than 50 iTunes singles — Murphy picks all the songs himself
— as well as three soundtracks and a sold-out concert tour.
6. Steve Burd – CEO, Safeway
Steve
Burd played a crucial role in the recent health-care debate. The exec
appeared repeatedly on Capitol Hill to describe the health and financial
benefits of the grocery chain’s unconventional wellness program, which
includes lower insurance premiums for nonunion employees who maintain
healthy blood-pressure and cholesterol levels and don’t smoke. Burd
insists that the company’s health-care costs rose just 2% from 2005 to
2009 compared to a nearly 40% increase for most companies. “The Safeway
amendment” — a provision that increases the incentives companies can pay
healthy employees — is now law.
7. Chris Anderson – Curator, TED Conferences
As
chief curator of TED — the Long Beach, California, conference of
multidisciplinary luminaries turned viral-video phenomenon turned
cultural juggernaut — the Brit has guided it into a newly global,
open-source phase this year. Volunteers have translated thousands of
videos into 76 languages and introduced TEDx, independently organized
events that in the first year has produced an astonishing 500 gatherings
in 70 countries and 35 languages.
8. Hannah Jones – VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation, Nike
Jones
says she joined Nike’s sustainability team to test whether it was “more
effective to shout from the outside or work from the inside.” Her
conclusion: The creative combination of both is the most potent. She has
paired Nike with NASA and venture capitalists to address water
shortages; with Creative Commons to launch GreenXchange, a platform for
companies to share green intellectual property; and with PopTech to
create an Open Collaboration Lab for scientists and engineers.
9. James Cameron – Filmmaker, Lightstorm Entertainment
Not
only did Avatar become the highest-grossing film in history (nearly
$2.7 billion worldwide) — surpassing Cameron’s previous record setter,
Titanic — but its visual spectacle and technical mastery also laid to
rest any doubts about 3-D as a profound medium for live action and
artistic ambition. When it comes to the business of Hollywood, Avatar
cemented his place in the realm of the gods.
10. Qi Lu – President of Online Services, Bing; Microsoft
It’s
hard to imagine software giant Microsoft in the role of David, but up
against the search Goliath Google, the casting fits. Spurning the
antiquated practice of releasing new updates every couple of years, Lu
is creating an environment where live-cycle updates and product
improvements are constant. Bing’s share of the search business is still
only about 12%, but if anyone can turn a pebble into a deadly stone, Lu
is the man
