George Soros appears in conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt discussing his new book "The Age of Fallibility: Consequence of the War on Terror" as part of the Authors@Google series.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
James Arthur Ray - Steve's Breakthrough
Here's a little one-on-one work with James Arthur Ray during the Harmonic Wealth Weekend. Steve had issues surrounding his mother and money, and you can witness the entire experience here.
Deepak Chopra - Way of the Wizard
A wizard exists in all of us. This wizard sees and knows everything. The wizard is beyond opposites of light and dark, good and evil, pleasure and pain. Everything the wizard sees has its roots in the unseen world. Nature reflects the mood of the wizard. The body and the mind may sleep, but the wizard is always awake. The wizard possesses the secret of immortality
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Bridging Heaven & Earth
62 min
An international author, life coach and modern day mystic, American born Prasad's contemporary metaphors and practical examples inspire us to remember the Truth of who we are. In a clear, compassionate, and often humorous way, Prasad confronts the problems of our day, while encouraging creative solutions for our personal and planetary evolution. He is the author of the books, “Dancing As The Infinite”, “God's Grace”, and “Why I Survive AIDS” (with AIDS survivor Niro Asistent and is the host of the weekly radio show, Lucid Living, on EnlightenedTalkRadio.com. Prasad is also an acclaimed workshop leader and has assisted thousands of people to wake up to the truth of who we are. www.prasadsatsang.com
An international author, life coach and modern day mystic, American born Prasad's contemporary metaphors and practical examples inspire us to remember the Truth of who we are. In a clear, compassionate, and often humorous way, Prasad confronts the problems of our day, while encouraging creative solutions for our personal and planetary evolution. He is the author of the books, “Dancing As The Infinite”, “God's Grace”, and “Why I Survive AIDS” (with AIDS survivor Niro Asistent and is the host of the weekly radio show, Lucid Living, on EnlightenedTalkRadio.com. Prasad is also an acclaimed workshop leader and has assisted thousands of people to wake up to the truth of who we are. www.prasadsatsang.com
The Power Of Dyslexia
The Power Of Dyslexia is inspirational to people that are affected by Dyslexia very much like the movie Taare Zameen Par. This video will show famous people with the power of dyslexia like: Albert Einstein, Tom Cruise, John Chambers, Vince Vaughn, Jay Leno, Salma Hayek, Orlando Bloom, Charles Schwab, Thomas Edison, Richard Branson, Henry Ford, Muhammad Ali, Winston Churchill, General George Patton and Henry Winkler. Taare Zameen Par
Everything I am
The law of attraction says what we focus on expands. I created this virtual vision board in order to help me focus more on the things I am. Enjoy!
Tony Robbins motivates you in 20 minutes: TEDTalks
Tony Robbins talks about how to unlock your true potential -- and high-fives Al Gore in the front row! A fast-paced, mind-expanding, motivating TEDTalk for high achievers and those who wish to be. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA.)
212 degrees - The Extra Degree
At 211 degrees, water is hot.
At 212 degrees, it boils.
And with boiling water, comes steam.
And steam can power a locomotive.
At 212 degrees, it boils.
And with boiling water, comes steam.
And steam can power a locomotive.
Jesus
121 min
Two thousand years after his death, Jesus of Nazareth remains one of the most fascinating and compelling figures of all human history. Few people have left such a profound impact throughout the world. This film is the definitive version of the life of Jesus, having been translated into more languages than any film in history. In order to be true to the message of Jesus, the screenplay was taken from the text of the Gospel of Luke. Virtually every word spoken by Jesus is drawn from the biblical text.
Two thousand years after his death, Jesus of Nazareth remains one of the most fascinating and compelling figures of all human history. Few people have left such a profound impact throughout the world. This film is the definitive version of the life of Jesus, having been translated into more languages than any film in history. In order to be true to the message of Jesus, the screenplay was taken from the text of the Gospel of Luke. Virtually every word spoken by Jesus is drawn from the biblical text.
The Life of Buddha
Over 2,500 years ago, one man showed the world a way to enlightenment. This beautifully produced Buddhist film meticulously reveals the fascinating story of Prince Siddhartha and the spiritual transformation that turned him into the Buddha
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Super Rich: The Greed Game
As the credit crunch bites and a global economic crisis threatens, Robert Peston reveals how the super-rich have made their fortunes, and the rest of us are picking up the bill
Monday, May 19, 2008
Ali al-Naimi
By Lynn Westfall
As the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources of Saudi Arabia, Ali al-Naimi pretty much controls the world's oil tap. It doesn't matter which nation's Oil Minister is the head of OPEC (currently it's Libya); Saudi Arabia has the biggest bat, and the Saudis have shown that they will use it to bring the others in line.
That's what makes al-Naimi, 73, the biggest hitter in oil, although at the moment he's not swinging hard. Why should he, with prices well north of $100 per bbl. and his own country benefiting? But Saudi Arabia is sitting on 1.5 million bbl. per day in spare capacity—its historical norm—and getting a lot of heat from the West to pump more. At the same time, OPEC hawks such as Venezuela and Iran wouldn't mind if oil crested $150 and the pain level increased.
Al-Naimi's predicament is that if he adds more oil supply to the market, the bubble will burst, and prices could go into a free fall. He has expressed his concern that oil prices are being driven by financial factors like speculators and not by supply and demand. My company refines oil into gasoline, and trust me, there's plenty of crude.
Al-Naimi is well regarded in the oil industry, a very articulate and thoughtful minister who is as concerned about Saudi Arabia's energy future as he is about the current situation. But he is walking a tightrope of petropolitics that has never been more difficult to balance.
Westfall is chief economist at Tesoro Corp., a large independent U.S. oil refiner
Rupert Murdoch
By Paul Steiger
Keith Rupert Murdoch is finally, at 77, what he has long dreamed of being: the world's most influential newspaper publisher. He is also much more than that: his $29 billion (revenue) News Corp. churns out films, video news and entertainment, books and Web content galore. While people think of Murdoch as rough-hewn and self-made, which in many ways he is, his background is gilded: he studied at Oxford and inherited his first newspaper.
Murdoch likes to place big bets and usually wins, although he teetered close to bankruptcy at least once, circa 1990. His genius flowed from seeing early that the revenue from then thriving newspapers could be leveraged to expand not only his original business but into other areas as well, most notably in acquiring a movie studio, building a fourth U.S. broadcast television network, driving forward satellite television with Sky, STAR and DirecTV and then boldly buying MySpace. His latest major purchase, Dow Jones, adds the Wall Street Journal to a newspaper collection that already included prestige nameplates in Britain (the Times) and his native Australia (the Australian) as well as the pulpier New York Post and Britain's News of the World and the Sun.
There is, to be sure, a darker side to Murdoch's influence and legacy. He has at times subordinated the journalism operations he controls to further his own business interests, undermining their credibility if not their long-term profitability. His own test of journalism sometimes seems to be what sells—no less but also no more. Yet Fox News, which many liberals decry as a conservative political pander by Murdoch, is actually best understood as a product designed to fill an untapped market niche in video news. It succeeded brilliantly.
A return to his roots and a victory lap of sorts, acquiring the Journal poses for Murdoch perhaps his greatest test as a publisher. He aspires to make money and extend the paper's reach while maintaining its prestige—a tall order, even for him.
Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, is editor in chief of ProPublica
Steve Jobs
By Barbara Kiviat
Steve Jobs is great at playing the countercultural icon. He's a college dropout who once backpacked around India looking for spiritual enlightenment, and he takes only $1 a year in salary. There are righteous battles to fight, and with Macs and iTunes and iPhones, Jobs fights them, taking on the entrenched megaliths that try to dictate our tastes in computers and music and mobile phones.
But don't let the black mock turtleneck and denim trousers fool you. More than anything else, Jobs is a canny CEO who knows how to sell product. Steve Wozniak was the technical genius behind the first Apple computer; Jobs saw the marketability. He now presides over a company with $24 billion in annual sales and 22,000 employees. Jobs, 53, is revered by tech and design geeks, but the world's business-school students may have the most to learn from him. Apple's stock has shot up more than 70% over the past year, thanks to Jobs' strategy of focusing on his most profitable customers and coming up with new things to sell them—the ultra-thin MacBook Air most recently—rather than just chasing more market share.
Jobs may be a celebrity CEO, but he doesn't jump out of airplanes or traipse around Africa with bundles of cash. He is always in character and always on message, so much so that when late-night TV parodies him, he's invariably rolling out some new iProduct . Jobs gets called mercurial, egomaniacal, a micromanager. If that sounds a little like a CEO doing his job, maybe that's because he is—and a mighty fine one.
Radiohead
By Edgar Bronfman Jr.
When the British rock band Radiohead announced that In Rainbows would be made available online directly to consumers at whatever price they wanted to pay, many said it signaled the end of the world's major music labels. As the CEO of one of them, I may surprise you by saying that in some ways, they were right. The traditional record-label business model—the one based on controlling access and distribution—is dead.
But Radiohead's innovation also indicated something more important: that new models are very much alive. Does this mean we view the future as a giant tip jar? Not exactly—and I suspect Radiohead doesn't either, particularly in light of the commercial success In Rainbows had after the "pay any price" offer ended.
In reality, the music industry is no longer defined by a single model but thousands of them. Consumers now access more music more conveniently than ever before. This empowerment has driven changes in the relationships between artists and music companies. As a result, artists today can establish relationships with labels that are best suited to their own music, commercial needs and artistic development. For example, while we had been Radiohead's longtime music publisher, we hadn't previously distributed the band's recorded music. But in the case of In Rainbows, we partnered with the band to create a unique digital-distribution venture to make the album available at online music stores.
If any band could extend its creativity and spirit to redefine an entire industry, it would be Radiohead. With a single bold experiment, it revealed a broad array of possibilities for experiencing and monetizing music in the future.
Bronfman is chairman and CEO of the Warner Music Group
John Chambers
By John Doerr
As chief executive of Cisco, John Chambers has made the Internet-systems company one of the best in the world. John, 58, has grown the firm from $1.2 billion in annual revenue when he took over as CEO in 1995 to its current run rate of $40 billion. But his true legacy will be molding it into one of the best for the world.
Videoconferencing fails to adequately describe Cisco's latest innovation, TelePresence. The lifelike virtual-meeting system is almost better than being there—especially when you consider the time, money and carbon emissions saved by cutting back on travel. The 500 units sold since 2006 are in 95 cities worldwide, and most multinationals will soon own one. And Cisco is serving more than global leaders and businesses—it is also connecting families and communities. TelePresence terminals have been set up at Wal-Marts and U.S. military bases in Iraq so American soldiers can speak to and see loved ones.
A consummate communicator, John talks most about education. Over the past decade, Cisco's Networking Academies have taught critical IT skills to more than 2.5 million students in 160 countries. These classes not only improve students' lives today but also prepare them to be the industry leaders of tomorrow. And when they are, they'll have the means to communicate too.
Doerr is a partner at the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Jeff Bezos
By Josh Quittner
Not content to simply reinvent shopping, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos believes that reading—the old-school, books- printed-on-paper kind—is sorely in need of a rethink. So he unveiled a paperback-size, battery-powered digital book reader dubbed the Kindle. It can store hundreds of titles and wirelessly downloads $10 books on demand.
The goal, says Bezos, is to create a device so seamless, book readers will enter a video-game-like "flow state" and "enter the author's world." The strategy, he adds, "is to make the device 'disappear.'" Mixed reviews notwithstanding, the $399 gadget certainly is flying off Amazon's shelves.
Nearly a decade after being anointed TIME's Person of the Year, Bezos, 44, is still leaving his mark on the future. A dotcom highflyer that came perilously close to crashing on Wall Street in 2001, Amazon is up once again—thanks to Bezos. The Seattle-based company had sales of $15 billion last year and controls 6% of the $136 billion online-retail market.
The tech world changes faster than a hummingbird flaps its wings. And Amazon's competitors change even faster. But Bezos' mantra has remained constant: Try to give your customers the biggest selection at the best prices, delivered cheaply and easily. That's a great, old-fashioned visionary.
Jay Adelson
By Lev Grossman
For a web company, there may be no better definition of total, unconditional victory than seeing your name become a verb. So far, that club includes Google and...nobody else. But if you had to predict the next tech brand to make the leap, Digg would be a good guess.
Digg.com, which gets about 26 million visitors a month (up from 16 million this time last year), is a website where readers rank news stories and other online content according to how interesting they are. The most popular ones bubble to the top. It's the ultimate Web 2.0 take on the ultimate Web 1.0 medium: Digg not only puts readers and editors on equal footing but also puts the Wall Street Journal on equal footing with Dwight Schrute's blog on the TV show The Office.
Jay Adelson, 37, is Digg's CEO. If somebody somewhere posts "The 11 Most Unintentionally Gay Rap Lyrics Ever," and you care about unintentionally gay rap lyrics, Adelson is the guy who makes sure you see that list. For someone who runs a human-powered media website, Adelson has a seriously crunchy background: he founded Equinix, a data-center company.
So if the people choose the news, what exactly does Digg's CEO do? He manages the community, grows the business and curates the arcane algorithms that translate votes into ranking and placement. Prime placement on Digg has become so valuable, people will do anything to get it, including cheat. Adelson makes sure nothing thwarts the will of the people. Not even Dwight Schrute.
The original version of this article incorrectly stated that Digg CEO Jay Adelson also founded the company. In fact Kevin Rose is the founder of Digg.
Steve Ballmer
By Guy Kawasaki
As Dan Quayle knows, a single event can define one's image. business execs have the same problem. Throwing a chair across the room when an employee tells you he's going to work for a competitor, dancing like a monkey at an employee meeting, screaming "Developers!" 14 times while drenched with sweat at a software conference—things like that are hard to live down. In Steve Ballmer's case, however, it's not a single event (he denies throwing the chair, but the dancing and screaming live on in viral video), nor does it unfairly define his image.
My interview with him onstage at a Microsoft conference in March wasn't exactly soft and lacy. For crying out loud, he threw my MacBook Air on the ground. The man is truly WYSIWYG—what you see is what you get—maybe more so than Microsoft's products. By contrast, Ballmer's title—chief executive officer—is a disguise. He is actually Microsoft's combative, take-no-prisoners chief warrior. If you want 95% of the wallets of every market that you're in, then you want this Steve. If you want 95% of the mind share of every market that you're in, then you need the other Steve (Jobs).
Ballmer, 52, is worth $15 billion, which makes him one of the world's 50 richest people, but he hasn't forgotten what got him there: sheer force of will. Many execs throw fits, dance like nuts and scream, but none deliver results the way Ballmer does. In the past two years, Microsoft profits have surged 20% and sales 28%. He has amassed a war chest, and he has never been shy about deploying it. Yahoo! is learning what it's like to be in his crosshairs. He also swears that he's going to smoke Google. Whether you like the company or not, give credit where credit is due: Steve Ballmer kicks ass.
Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com and Garage Technology Ventures and former chief evangelist of Apple
Jamie Dimon
By Michael Bloomberg
Shakespeare isn't usually associated with investment banking. But Jamie Dimon is quick to apply the Bard's insights on power and responsibility, intrigue and honor, to life on Wall Street.
He has certainly experienced as many spectacular reversals of fortune as any Shakespearean hero. Ten years ago, he was expected to be crowned head of his firm, Citigroup, as it merged with the Travelers Group. Instead he was abruptly pushed aside. But he returned in triumph when he sold Chicago's Bank One to JPMorgan Chase and quickly ascended to command of the House of Morgan himself.
In March the curtain went up on the most audacious plot twist yet. After three sleepless days of frantic negotiations involving the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank, JPMorgan Chase bought the reeling investment firm Bear Stearns, fending off a meltdown of the financial markets. It made Jamie, 52, a principal player in the biggest financial drama of our time. Putting the deal together was tough; making it work will be tougher still. If anyone can do it, he can.
Like Jamie, I've faced slings and arrows of outrageous Wall Street fortune; my own 15-year career at Salomon Brothers ended with a surprise boot out the door. But life has given better second and third acts to us both—in Jamie's case, a lead role in ending our winter of financial discontent.
Bloomberg is mayor of New York City and the founder of Bloomberg LP
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal
By Riz Khan
As people run around screaming about a clash of civilizations, it is reassuring to spend time with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. He crosses boundaries in a unique way, proudly emphasizing his role as the largest individual foreign investor in the U.S. and mingling with power brokers from business, politics and even entertainment, in the East and the West. The Arab world needs people like him who show that good business can unite the most diverse of cultures and nations. In the mid-'90s, he bailed out Citibank when no one else would step in—including Americans. He has openly condemned terrorism and pushed for reform at home in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East—although he points out with a wry smile that modernization does not have to equal Westernization. The Arab world, he believes, can find a balance that moves it forward without compromising traditions and culture.
The Middle East is at a crossroads. On the one hand, there are forces pushing for a break from the West because of its intervention in places like Iraq and its inequity in the treatment of Israelis compared with Palestinians. On the other hand, prosperous Gulf nations such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar encourage closer ties with America and Europe to help grow their mushrooming multicultural societies.
Prince Alwaleed, 53, has shown that the common goals of peace and stability can conquer ill-founded prejudices. He has charm, a wonderful sense of humor and the rare ability to answer tough questions with candid answers. With his example, it is possible the right path on that crossroads will be chosen.
Khan is a host on Al Jazeera English and the author of Alwaleed
Lou Jiwei
By Stephen S. Roach
Can one fund manager make a difference to China and the rest of the world? That question will be answered by Lou Jiwei, 57, China's former Vice Minister of Finance and one of the country's most seasoned financial operators. It is a daunting challenge: organizing the largest investment-fund start-up ever when the world could well be in the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.
In a relatively short period of time, China has amassed more than $1.6 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, the largest such reservoir in history. While this cushions China from the vicissitudes of ever volatile financial markets, much of it is invested in low-yielding U.S. Treasury securities. So authorities earmarked $200 billion of this pool for a new sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corp. (CIC), which Lou now runs. The goal: generate higher returns through advanced asset-management techniques.
Lou must assemble a first-rate management team as well as develop an investment discipline aligned with China's longer-term return objectives. As if that were not enough, he has also been thrust into the heart of an intense geopolitical debate over the role governments should play in shaping cross-border investment. If successful, the CIC could receive billions more of investable capital—which could quickly turn Lou into one of the most powerful fund managers on the planet.
Roach is an economist and the chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Are You Born to Be a Billionaire?
by Maureen Farrell, Forbes.com
Empire builders like Bill Gates and Sam Walton aren't just great businessmen. They are bona fide revolutionaries.
Self-made billionaires don't dominate industries--they transform them and spawn new ones. That takes more than intelligence, courage and luck. It takes divine-like vision.
Billionaire entrepreneurs are "not working within the confines of the current market," says Gerald Kraines, chief executive of the Levinson Institute, a business consulting firm in Jaffey, N.H. "They're anticipating things much further afield. You have to see spaces that no one else sees."
The world's self-made billionaires certainly have vision in spades, spanning everything from how computers work to how people shop. But the ability to see around corners isn't the only quality that separates the very accomplished from the stratospherically wealthy. To crack the $1 billion barrier, you need total, unwavering belief in your vision--and an immutable will to pull it off.
"[Billionaire entrepreneurs] need a deep passion and a point of view about the future," says Peter Skarzynski, chief executive of Strategos, a Chicago-based consulting firm that advises global companies, including Nokia and Whirlpool. "They fundamentally believe that they have a better way to solve a set of problems than how they're being solved now."
Billionaires also have a seemingly ravenous appetite for risk. It's hard enough for many of us to muster the courage to abandon our cubicles and start a small company, let alone build an empire. And while the risks pile up as businesses expand, billionaires have a confidence bordering on arrogance that checks their fear and doubt, says Skarzynski.
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Are you a born billionaire? Before you tackle a serious growth strategy and all its attendant hassles, ask yourself some hard questions at the outset, says executive psychologist Debra Condren, who has worked with big names like 3M, Chevron and Hewlett-Packard.
The most important one: Why go big at all? Are you looking to cash out in a sale? Enamored of the thought of having your own stock ticker? Suffused with competitive desire? Whatever your reason, get a grip on it before you decide to kick your zealous pursuits into high gear.
Next, ask yourself if you are willing to make tough decisions for the growth of your company. If you have an intense loyalty to the small group who helped get things off the ground, understand that those folks may not be able to come along for the ride. If you're not comfortable supplanting (or firing) them, stay small.
For entrepreneurs who prize their independence, ask yourselves how much of it you're willing to give up. As the demands mount, both your schedule and decisions become less your own; worse, you may have investors and board members to appease.
"It becomes very hard for company founders to accept that they are no longer the real boss," says Carl Robinson, a psychologist who works primarily with growing, middle-market companies.
Like holding forth in public? You'd better, because companies of any significant size need a public face. Entrepreneurs who thrive on public performances--weekly meetings, shareholder gripe sessions, even television interviews--have an easier time than those who shun the spotlight.
"You need to have the ability to fill a room and inspire people," says Condren. If public speaking isn't your forté, but you're still hankering to grow, find a confident substitute who can sell your story.
Not only do you have to be able to communicate, you need a knack for building consensus. In most cases, the bigger your business, the more input you need from those around you--and that means being willing and able to marshal them to your cause. Have a my-way-or-the-highway mentality? Can your growth plans.
In the end, chasing billionaire status--and not crashing along the way--is as much about knowing who you are as it is about knowing how to nab new customers or manage inventory. Who knows? Maybe a modest $100 million might be a better fit.
Empire builders like Bill Gates and Sam Walton aren't just great businessmen. They are bona fide revolutionaries.
Self-made billionaires don't dominate industries--they transform them and spawn new ones. That takes more than intelligence, courage and luck. It takes divine-like vision.
Billionaire entrepreneurs are "not working within the confines of the current market," says Gerald Kraines, chief executive of the Levinson Institute, a business consulting firm in Jaffey, N.H. "They're anticipating things much further afield. You have to see spaces that no one else sees."
The world's self-made billionaires certainly have vision in spades, spanning everything from how computers work to how people shop. But the ability to see around corners isn't the only quality that separates the very accomplished from the stratospherically wealthy. To crack the $1 billion barrier, you need total, unwavering belief in your vision--and an immutable will to pull it off.
"[Billionaire entrepreneurs] need a deep passion and a point of view about the future," says Peter Skarzynski, chief executive of Strategos, a Chicago-based consulting firm that advises global companies, including Nokia and Whirlpool. "They fundamentally believe that they have a better way to solve a set of problems than how they're being solved now."
Billionaires also have a seemingly ravenous appetite for risk. It's hard enough for many of us to muster the courage to abandon our cubicles and start a small company, let alone build an empire. And while the risks pile up as businesses expand, billionaires have a confidence bordering on arrogance that checks their fear and doubt, says Skarzynski.
Want More Banking and Budgeting Tips?
Visit our Credit Report Center
Are you a born billionaire? Before you tackle a serious growth strategy and all its attendant hassles, ask yourself some hard questions at the outset, says executive psychologist Debra Condren, who has worked with big names like 3M, Chevron and Hewlett-Packard.
The most important one: Why go big at all? Are you looking to cash out in a sale? Enamored of the thought of having your own stock ticker? Suffused with competitive desire? Whatever your reason, get a grip on it before you decide to kick your zealous pursuits into high gear.
Next, ask yourself if you are willing to make tough decisions for the growth of your company. If you have an intense loyalty to the small group who helped get things off the ground, understand that those folks may not be able to come along for the ride. If you're not comfortable supplanting (or firing) them, stay small.
For entrepreneurs who prize their independence, ask yourselves how much of it you're willing to give up. As the demands mount, both your schedule and decisions become less your own; worse, you may have investors and board members to appease.
"It becomes very hard for company founders to accept that they are no longer the real boss," says Carl Robinson, a psychologist who works primarily with growing, middle-market companies.
Like holding forth in public? You'd better, because companies of any significant size need a public face. Entrepreneurs who thrive on public performances--weekly meetings, shareholder gripe sessions, even television interviews--have an easier time than those who shun the spotlight.
"You need to have the ability to fill a room and inspire people," says Condren. If public speaking isn't your forté, but you're still hankering to grow, find a confident substitute who can sell your story.
Not only do you have to be able to communicate, you need a knack for building consensus. In most cases, the bigger your business, the more input you need from those around you--and that means being willing and able to marshal them to your cause. Have a my-way-or-the-highway mentality? Can your growth plans.
In the end, chasing billionaire status--and not crashing along the way--is as much about knowing who you are as it is about knowing how to nab new customers or manage inventory. Who knows? Maybe a modest $100 million might be a better fit.
Neelie Kroes
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Were she alive today, the trailblazing american feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton would applaud Holland's Neelie Kroes. As a young woman, Neelie was overlooked to head her father's firm and had to resign from another job when she got pregnant. She moved on, became a politician and a businesswoman and is now the European Union's Commissioner for Competition. She can be as playful as a kitten, lighthearted and charming, but there's also a tigress in her. Microsoft underestimated her determination to fight for her convictions and lost a high-profile E.U. case.
It was Neelie, 66, who persuaded me to get into the Dutch parliament. She told me that having the liberty to choose as a woman not only opens the doors to power and money but also carries the responsibility to live with the consequences of those choices. These words, combined with her foresight that feminism's next challenge is to improve the position of Muslim women and other women from the unfree world, helped give me the courage for that fight.
Hirsi Ali is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of Infidel
Jeffrey Immelt
By Conan O'Brien
When Jeff Immelt ordered me to write this tribute, I was honored. He then made it clear that there was a GE washer-dryer in it for me if I bumped it up to "deeply honored," and an MRI machine if I worked in a reference to his "catlike reflexes."
According to Wikipedia, Jeffrey Robert Immelt was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, played football at Dartmouth College and earned his M.B.A. at Harvard Business School. Wikipedia goes on to say that Mr. Immelt spent his early career guessing people's weight in an unlicensed South American carnival. Yes, there's nothing like the Internet when you need fast, reliable information.
Jeff Immelt is my boss. In fact, he's my boss's boss's boss. My Late Night program accounts for roughly 0.00000002% of GE's empire, yet I've actually gotten to know the man and his family. This is because Jeff genuinely wants to know and understand the people who work for him. As much as I want to reduce any CEO to The Simpsons' Mr. Burns—sinister and out of touch—Jeff Immelt, 52, defies the stereotype. He gives you the impression that he's equally at home at a research lab in Bangalore, a turbine factory in Schenectady, N.Y., and a dress rehearsal for Saturday Night Live. This is not a man in a bubble.
Two years ago, Jeff invited me to a small meeting to discuss the seismic shifts in network television. I remember the meeting for two reasons: 1) There were snacks. 2) At one point, someone asked Jeff a question about ad revenue and the movie business. What struck me was that Jeff simply said, "I don't know." No spin, no double-talk, no corporate-speak. I've met a lot of accomplished people, and I've always thought it's a sign of real intelligence when anyone with power and expertise admits he doesn't have all the answers.
Let's be honest: any attempt to humanize a $320 billion monolith like GE will probably be met with cynicism. It's easy for a CEO to pay lip service to "going green" or "corporate responsibility," but Jeff seems to genuinely care about finding the nexus between doing well and doing right. God knows, it's a job I wouldn't want, but I'm certainly glad he has it.
And as if all that weren't enough, the man has some serious catlike reflexes.
O'Brien is host of NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Karl Lagerfeld
By Zaha Hadid
Chanel has always symbolized elegance; the brand's identity has always been crystal-clear. It is how Karl Lagerfeld has pushed the boundaries of what is possible, reinventing classic Chanel pieces without compromising the integrity of Coco Chanel's original designs, that commands such respect. The initial context of his work demanded a kind of radicalism. Before Karl, we all looked to couture for inspiration and direction. Now, through his work, fashion originates from the street, the media—anywhere. This has resulted in exciting collections that are provocative and sensual. His unrelenting experimentation in fashion, art and photography offers us endless possibilities yet is always grounded and relevant.
Karl consistently reinvents the program with his own ideas and interpretations, which aren't tied to the form of an institution. Karl, 69, is a passionate connoisseur of architecture. He invited me to create the Mobile Art for Chanel, likening the value of my designs to that of great poetry. I could not resist the challenge. He allowed us the greatest degree of experimentation, and we used the latest technologies to create a woven topology of fluid spaces. Visitors are wrapped in a spatial complexity that simultaneously captures and liberates.
Mobile Art for Chanel illustrates how we both feel that fashion and architecture must constantly evolve. What's new in our generation is a greater level of social complexity—manifest in its architecture, art and fashion. There are no simple formulas, no global solutions and little repetition. Karl has spent a career showing us just this.
Hadid was the 2004 winner of the Pritzker Prize in architecture
Michael Arrington
Michael Arrington, a former corporate attorney who, via his TechCrunch blog, has become one of the most influential figures on the Web, is the quintessential blogger: intense, passionate, consumed with his subject, opinionated, sleep-deprived, forward-thinking, easy to irritate and apt to air his grudges in public. Arrington's vast network of Silicon Valley sources—many gained through his legendary parties—allows him to be ahead of the tech-biz curve and often play Web 2.0 kingmaker.
The road to online glory for Arrington, 38, has had many detours. A self-described "exceptionally average attorney," he left law to become a Web entrepreneur—just in time to have the Internet bubble burst in his face. He took a year off and, after returning to the work world, started blogging as a way to understand the new Web start-ups that had arisen in his absence. TechCrunch took off, and he soon found himself an accidental power broker. He's not leaving the next step to chance: Crunch has expanded to sites covering everything from gadgets to portable computing to jobs, with more on the drawing board.
Dubbed the Walter Winchell of Silicon Valley and compared by Wired magazine to "a Hollywood agent at a cast party" and to "Tony Soprano—a large man always on the verge of losing his cool," Arrington is ready to add another rep: cybermogul.
Huffington is editor in chief of the Huffington Post. Her new book is Right Is Wrong
Carine Roitfeld
By Hedi Slimane
Carine Roitfeld was a freelance fashion editor at French Vogue and I was the newly appointed menswear designer at Yves Saint Laurent when we met in 1998. She was the first person to see my debut collection. As she did with many other designers of my generation, she was the first to support it in the press. Together with Saint Laurent and his business partner, Pierre Bergé, she helped launch my career. And as always, she did it genuinely, without any kind of speculation or personal agenda.
Carine, 53, has always been a charismatic Parisian, one of the most Parisian women I know, in every detail of her life. She has immaculate taste, and she is beyond unconventional in her thinking. With time I discovered that we shared a few principles: a preference for the "now" rather than the "new," a preference for imperfection rather than so-called good taste and an attitude driven by intuition rather than reason. Most of all, she has an innate ability to mix street culture and society, always avoiding the caricatures that can define both worlds and always recognizing the mix of both worlds as the only catalyst of energy and creativity.
Now the editor in chief of French Vogue, she is influential almost without knowing it. By choosing influence over power, she has an effortless credibility. Her definition of fashion is clearly hedonistic, embracing fashion's immediacy but with a broad cultural vision that puts everything in perspective. She has always been fully committed to fashion and also gracious to all. She plays by her own refreshing rules, not by the kindergarten politics that often governs the business.
No one would assume she does not know or talks without knowing. Every day, from 9 a.m., she simply acts and looks as if there is no misunderstanding about her job. She is progressive and perfectly behaved and an inspiration for fashion designers.
Slimane is the former designer for Christian Dior Homme
Cynthia Carroll
By Nicky Oppenheimer
Nobody symbolizes the changing face of world mining more than Cynthia Carroll. As chief executive of Anglo American, she is leading one of the 100 largest companies in London's FTSE index at one of the most exciting times in the history of our industry.
Cynthia, 51, is the first woman and also the first non-South African (she is American) to lead the company founded by my grandfather Sir Ernest Oppenheimer in 1917. But she has mining in her blood. She cut her teeth in oil and gas 30 years ago as a petroleum geologist armed with an M.B.A. from Harvard. That hands-on experience is what this business is all about.
In the consolidation froth that has swept the industry in recent months, Cynthia has been clear that she does not necessarily want Anglo to be the biggest—but she certainly wants it to be the best, whether in profitability, operating efficiencies or its record on safety and sustainability.
As an African myself, I am particularly pleased that she is not inclined to accept the prevalent tide of Afro-pessimism. She sees Africa with fresh eyes as a continent of opportunity, where Anglo, with its history, is well placed to develop new mining projects. She thinks in the long term, developing business that will thrive well beyond the life of any particular mine. This is how mining companies should be.
Oppenheimer is chairman of the De Beers Group
Ratan Tata
By Simon Robinson
Since Ratan Tata first suggested building a car that could sell for 100,000 Indian rupees ($2,500) four years ago, rival automakers have sniggered. "If you think about the direction that safety and environmental standards are going in India, you can't sell a car for that kind of price," said Osamu Suzuki, head of the eponymous Japanese car company that is the Indian-market leader. But in January, Tata unveiled his baby car, a cute rear-engined bubble called Nano. The Nano will meet all of India's automotive standards and sell for 100,000 rupees.
"A promise," said Tata, "is a promise."
If the idea behind the Nano is to put a car within affordable reach of millions more Indians, Tata's other big auto play is focused on the few. In March, Tata Motors, an arm of the Tata Group—a sprawling conglomerate based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) that spans tea, steel, software, business services and hotels—bought the prestigious British automakers Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford for $2.3 billion.
Analysts often cite Tata Group as the paragon of a company from a developing nation that is reshaping the globe. To ensure that the group stays at the forefront of that change, Tata, 70, a bachelor with no children, who told the Financial Times last year that he would like to retire after the successful launch of the Nano, will have to choose someone as savvy and visionary as he has been to lead the 140-year-old firm. That could prove even more difficult than creating a $2,500 car.
Mo Ibrahim
By William Easterly
Mo Ibrahim has always been a man of vision. His doctoral thesis dealt with mobile communications—in 1974. When he started a mobile-phone company, Celtel, in 1998 to work exclusively in Africa, there were just 2 million cell phones on the continent. When he sold it seven years later, there were more than 100 million.
A British national with roots in Sudan, Ibrahim never lost faith in his native Africa. He understood the enormous potential that could be unleashed by technology. Until then, unreliable and inadequate telephone landlines had frustrated Africans' entrepreneurial abilities. While doing business in Africa, he recognized two other essential but unmet needs: good governance and accountable institutions.
To pursue his vision of a better Africa, Ibrahim, 61, set up a foundation in his name to rate countries on their quality of governance. This annual country index shames governments into bettering their ratings and provides a nuanced picture of the continent's institutions to non-Africans, who tend to see Africa's problems as insurmountable. The inaugural Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, which rewards respect for democratic institutions, went to former President of Mozambique Joaquin Chissano last year. Judging by the upwelling of democracy on the continent, it looks as if Mo Ibrahim once again is in the vanguard of change.
Easterly, author of The White Man's Burden, is an economist at New York University
Carlos Slim
By Alvin Toffler
No one needs to be convinced of Carlos Slim's business acumen. But less known are his intellectual interests, ranging from the origins of our planet to contemporary literature. Sharing dinner with him, my wife Heidi and I have also found ourselves face to face with writers like Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez and Carlos Fuentes. We might discuss our most recent book with him or ask about the future of the cell-phone industry or the role of remittances in the Mexican economy.
Once during a weekend visit to his beach house, Heidi woke up very early and went to the kitchen to get some coffee. Carlos was already sitting at the table, reading what looked like a school notebook. "I've been up for two hours writing," he said. "I like to stay in bed, think and write in my notebooks." He had sketched out detailed ideas for remodeling a slum neighborhood in Mexico City, which would involve building low-cost housing, schools and a community hospital. All but unknown are Carlos' contributions to infants in need of highly specialized surgery, to young people seeking higher education and to adults in Mexico's equivalent of what amounts to debtor's prison.
Although he has been harshly criticized for his wealth, Carlos, 68, belies simplistic characterization. Even a superbillionaire can love and honor his spouse, treat women with respect, pursue wide-ranging intellectual interests and, in his own quiet way, support social reform.
Toffler is the author of Future Shock. His most recent book is Revolutionary Wealth
Lloyd Blankfein
By Robert Reich
The smiling Buddha sitting in the center of the simmering heap of Wall Street is Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. He's the last man standing. When the rest of the Street fell for mortgage-backed securities, Goldman wisely steered clear. Blankfein has also transformed Goldman from a prestigious purveyor of corporate advice into the most profitable trader in Wall Street history—chalking up earnings of $11.6 billion last year and landing Blankfein, 53, almost $70 million in payouts.
Blankfein's rise reflects two big changes in the U.S. economy over the past 25 years. The first is a power shift from Main Street to Wall Street—from making things to making deals. The other big change is on the Street itself—from giving financial advice to managing risk. Blankfein has transformed Goldman from blue-chip adviser to the Street's top risk manager.
We can debate whether these changes have been good for America. Blankfein's predecessor was Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and before that, former Treasury boss Bob Rubin. There's little doubt he has been deeply involved in Washington's strategy for keeping the rest of the Street afloat. Once, captains of American industry had great economic influence in Washington. Now it's the investment bankers, with Blankfein leading the charge.
Reich, author of Supercapitalism, was U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1993 to '97
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Charlie Rose:Palaniappan Chidambaram
An hour conversation with Palaniappan Chidambaram, Finance Minister of India about the growing Indian economy, energy, outsourcing and India's global role.
Indra Nooyi
By Howard Schultz
The most appropriate way to describe Indra Nooyi, chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, is "world class leader." Her sharp strategic mind, tremendous market insight and humanitarian contributions all combine to make her a rare executive among the global corporate giants. PepsiCo's international business grew 22% last year, and she is showing the way for American companies trying to do well overseas. (These days, that's everybody.) Indra, 52, was also way ahead of her competitors in moving the company toward healthier products. She pushed for PepsiCo to buy Quaker Oats and Tropicana, and I wasn't surprised when PepsiCo removed trans fats from its products well before most other companies did.
I've known Indra for the past 10 years or so, ever since Starbucks and PepsiCo began a joint-venture partnership to market and distribute ready-to-drink Starbucks products. I have been particularly impressed by her willingness to do the right thing for her employees and consumers. As someone who has always aspired to build a company committed to its people and to the world, I admire her determination to achieve sustainability at an established company like PepsiCo. And I believe that all socially responsible companies could learn from Indra Nooyi's style of leadership. She welcomes hearing from people who disagree with her, but she is single-minded about following the path she believes is best for her company and its shareholders. Under her direction, I expect that we will see PepsiCo do even more in the future to excite consumers and create a better global community.
Schultz is the chairman, president and CEO of Starbucks Coffee Co.
Charlie Rose - Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India
An exclusive conversation with Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India. This conversation will begin a week of interviews taped in India ahead of President Bush's historic visit. Each night, from February 27th to March 3rd, Charlie Rose will feature discussions with the people shaping the new India.
Isaac Berzin
By Fred Krupp
Isaac Berzin recently signed a $92 million contract to grow the stuff most people scrape out of their fish tanks. His improbably valuable crop is algae, which may one day provide us with a way out of our dependency on fossil fuels and the climatological mess they're making.
Berzin, 40, a chemical engineer, knew a few things about algae: they double their mass in a few hours, produce 30 times as much oil per acre as sunflowers do and thrive in sewage or brackish water. Most important, they devour carbon dioxide, the primary culprit in global warming. Grow the stuff like a crop, and you could use it both to produce biofuel and to pull a key greenhouse gas out of the sky. In 2001, Berzin founded GreenFuel Technologies in Cambridge, Mass., to do just that. By 2007 he had algae growing at the Redhawk power plant near Phoenix, with pipes from the smokestacks running into his greenhouses, where the algae gobbled up the CO2. He is now working with a national lab to make jet fuel from his green slime.
Berzin is one of thousands of innovators reinventing the $6 trillion energy business. In Israel, where he was educated and raised, biblical metaphors come naturally to mind. Berzin points out that God first appeared to Moses as a bush that was burned but not consumed. "What can you burn without consuming it?" Berzin asks. "Renewable fuels."
Krupp is president of the New York City-based Environmental Defense Fund
Susan Solomon
By Rajendra Pachauri
All scientists like to believe they will leave the world better than they found it. Susan Solomon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration surely will. Having helped save the earth's atmosphere already, she is now playing a role in doing it again.
An atmospheric chemist, Solomon, 52, was one of the first to be stirred into action by reports in the 1980s of deterioration of the planet's ozone layer. In 1986 and '87, she led expeditions to Antarctica, working through the darkness of the polar winter and bringing back confirmation that there was indeed a growing ozone hole and that chemicals known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing it. Those conclusions helped lead to a global ban on CFCs.
Last year she tackled an even bigger job. As a co-chair with Dr. Qin Dahe of Working Group 1 of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), she played a key role in producing the report that has helped the world understand the severity of global warming. Certainly Solomon was not alone. Three working groups drafted the report, and when the IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore were awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, it was an acknowledgment of the work of many. Still, it's hard to overlook Solomon among the many, both for what she has achieved in the past and for the achievements sure to come.
Pachauri is chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Michael Griffin
By Marsha Ivins
Mike Griffin, 58, had wanted to be administrator of NASA since the inception of the agency. To him, the appeal of the job was never about position or title but about the fact that space fired his imagination. It still does, and now, thanks to him, manned exploration of the moon and Mars is becoming a real possibility.
With advanced degrees in half a dozen fields and experience managing military and civilian space programs, he was the ideal choice when President George W. Bush needed a new NASA administrator to manage the moon-Mars initiative he announced in 2004. Mike made it immediately clear that he would do things differently. With four simple words—"Just call me Mike"—he began restructuring NASA into the kind of openly communicative and inspired organization it once was. A true engineer in the broadest sense, he understands systems—whether they are rockets, satellites, airplanes or the U.S. Congress. Not only can he quote you the history of a technical concept, but he can also derive the theory for you.
NASA is dead serious about having footprints back on the moon by 2020, and even now the metal is being cut on the new ships that will fly those missions. Mike Griffin—a true rocket scientist—is precisely the kind of person who will see that the job gets done.
Ivins is an astronaut and a veteran of five space-shuttle missions
Shinya Yamanaka & James Thomson
By Ian Wilmut
Few people doubt that embryonic stem cells may offer extraordinary opportunities to treat or prevent disease, but few deny either that the politics surrounding the idea has often seemed as complex as the science. All that may have changed last year with the announcement that it was possible to give adult human cells many of the characteristics of embryonic stem cells, avoiding entirely the issue of whether embryos would be destroyed in the process. The new cells, known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, are expected to live for a very long time while retaining the ability to form all of the different tissues found in a human body.
Shinya Yamanaka, 45, working in Japan's Kyoto University with mouse cells, made the iPS breakthrough. He screened 24 candidate proteins before finding four that were able to reprogram adult cells, reverting them to their embryonic state. He and others then showed that these factors are also effective in human cells. Developmental biologist James Thomson, 49, of the University of Wisconsin was the first to identify a slightly different group of factors that do the same.
One day iPS cells may be used to replace cells damaged or lost in disease, but much remains to be learned before such therapy would be appropriate. As a step along the way, iPS cells from patients with an inherited disease will offer opportunities to study illnesses such as als and Parkinson's and psychological ailments, as scientists program the cells back to their embryonic state and watch them mature in the lab. In the process, they may pinpoint the breakdowns that lead to the disease. The precise mechanism that led to Yamanaka's and Thomson's achievement last year is not yet understood, but the potential of that achievement is; it is a potential that could be unlimited.
Wilmut cloned the first mammal—a sheep he named Dolly—using stem cells
Wendy Kopp
By Jeffrey Kluger
It's hard to know exactly what Wendy Kopp was expecting back in 1989 when she came up with a big idea for her senior year thesis at Princeton University. It's safe to assume, however, that she didn't expect her professor to call her "quite evidently deranged," which he did. Kopp, to her credit, chose not to listen. That turned out to be a very good thing for millions of kids.
The wild idea Kopp, now 40, had was to launch a U.S. national teaching corps, similar to President John F. Kennedy's Peace Corps, that would recruit young teachers straight out of college and sign them up for a two-year hitch working in some of the country's more disadvantaged schools. Since income too often determines where you live, and where you live too often determines whether you'll go to a failing school or a good school, Kopp saw more than a simple problem of educational inequity at work. She saw what she considered the most important civil rights issue of her generation.
In 1990, Kopp, then 23, raised $2.5 million to get her teaching corps started. From that beginning came Teach for America, a nationwide organization that today boasts more than 5,000 member teachers, who work in communities all over the country and reach 440,000 kids. Some 12,000 veterans of Teach for America have continued their teaching careers, often providing leadership for troubled schools in their own communities. A 2005 study showed that 75% of school principals consider Teach for America teachers more effective than other teachers, and a 2004 study showed Teach for America students do better than other kids in math. Deranged or not, Kopp's idea is working—and as a result, more kids are learning.
Mark Zuckerberg
By Craig Newmark
The internet is about people connecting to people, whether for business, politics or socializing. That's something we've all been doing since long before the Internet existed. The real accomplishment is to make those connections so versatile and different that they create a social network that not only reflects your life but maybe expands it.
Mark Zuckerberg, 23, the creator of Facebook, has done just that.
Working from his dorm room at Harvard in 2004, Zuckerberg launched Facebook as a campuswide system and later expanded it to other colleges. The site exploded nationally and globally, and with that came tens of millions of dollars from investors, buyout offers from Yahoo! and Viacom, and a worldwide community of Facebook users.
All that happened because Zuckerberg has remained true to his vision, focusing on building a community rather than on a mere exit strategy—which is why those buyout offers have been declined. Facebook also provides a flexible information ecology, offering a fairly open system that allows users to add small applications to pages. As a result, members are starting to run businesses via the Facebook platform, including loan systems and music distribution. There are challenges, including "Facebook fatigue," which results from just too many invitations. Then, of course, there are issues related to monetization; investors are patient, but not forever. Facebook, however, just keeps growing, with more than 70 million active users so far. That's a lot of people connecting via Zuckerberg's vision—which is just what that vision was always about.
Newmark is the founder of Craigslist, which attracts 30 million people a month
Nicholas Schiff
By Michael Kinsley
If there were a surgical procedure of the year, 2007's winner would have been an operation known as deep brain stimulation (DBS). Most folks are not familiar with it, but 40,000 people (myself included) are intimately so, having undergone it as a radical—and startlingly effective—way to treat the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Last year a new frontier in DBS was opened when a team led by Dr. Nicholas Schiff of the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City used it to turn the cognitive lights back on in a man who had spent six years in a near coma as a result of injuries suffered in a mugging and had seemed destined to spend the rest of his life that way.
A DBS procedure is actually two operations. First, surgeons drill a pair of dime-size holes in the skull and thread fine wires down to whatever area of the brain is misfiring or otherwise malfunctioning. A week later, they insert a pacemaker-like device in the chest, thread wires under the skin and connect them to the ones in the brain. When they metaphorically flip the switch (actually, they use magnets to turn the batteries on and off), the symptoms disappear, or at least are greatly reduced.
For the brain-damaged man in last year's procedure, that reduction meant a lot. He is far from cured, but he can recognize his parents and conduct brief conversations. Schiff, 42, led the team that planned and conducted the procedure, though the surgery itself was performed at the Cleveland Clinic by Dr. Ali Rezai, who also performed my procedure and has used DBS on patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and deep clinical depression. As battlefield medical care gets increasingly sophisticated, more and more soldiers with catastrophic head injuries are surviving combat zones like Iraq, only to come home and find that little can be done to restore their minds. Now, thanks to Schiff and his colleagues, that is changing.
Kinsley, a TIME columnist, underwent DBS to treat Parkinson's in 2006
Friday, May 16, 2008
Paul Allen
By Thomas Insel and Story Landis
If the brain is science's great frontier, you need someone to lead the expedition—someone with smarts and curiosity, not to mention a large bank account to finance the journey. In the terra incognita of the brain, that's Paul Allen.
Co-founder of Microsoft, owner of three sports teams and lead backer of SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 made the first private manned space flight, Allen, 55, is also head of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, which was founded in 2001 with the goal of mapping the brain, cell by cell and gene by gene. His scientific team began with the mouse brain and finished the job in 2006, posting all the data online. Scientists everywhere now have a free neural GPS to learn where and how specific genes are expressed—a vital tool for studying similar functions in human brains.
The institute has now begun its own effort to map human gene expressions, hoping for insight into the molecular basis of consciousness and creativity. Allen founded his institute in the belief that with the right tools you can transform the speed of science itself. Not many people accomplish that even once. Allen is doing it yet again.
Insel heads the National Institute of Mental Health; Landis leads the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Mary Lou Jepsen
By Brewster Kahle
Think it's hard to keep the computers in your kid's school up-to-date? How about the 50% of children worldwide who learn outdoors? If half the planet was not going to be excluded from the Internet age, somebody had to come up with a machine that would work in such unlikely places. Mary Lou Jepsen, 43, did. Along the way, she also survived a terrifying disease.
Jepsen is a veteran of the MIT Media Lab, where she co-created the world's first holographic video system in 1989—back when computer imaging meant straight lines on a cathode screen. In 2005 Jepsen and Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte launched the nonprofit, open-source One Laptop Per Child program, which, as the name suggests, was an attempt to get a computer to every child in the world who needs one. The machines would have to work in extreme climate, amid spotty power and Internet connectivity, and be readable in direct sunlight. Oh, and they would have to sell for around $100 each. Negroponte ran the project, but Jepsen was the lead innovator and architect of the hundreds-strong team that would design the machine.
Within two years they succeeded, creating a computer that can run on solar power, with five times the screen resolution of other laptops and a wireless system that creates its own network. The $100 price point has not been met, but $188 has. Jepsen did all that 12 years after receiving a diagnosis of a brain tumor in 1995 that had gone undetected for five years. She beat the disease but must take a dozen pills every day to keep her hormone output stable. Something of a self-taught expert on hormones, she now offers her insights to others who are diagnosed with the same illness. Jepsen is known among her friends as the "light lady" for her work with computer imaging. But the kind of light she's shedding goes far beyond the screen.
Kahle is director and co-founder of the Internet Archive, an open, online library for historical collections
TIME 100: SCIENTISTS AND THINKERS
Daniel C. Dennett///Dr. Robert C. Gallo///Peter J. Gay///Walter Isaacson, Time Magazine///Steven Pinker, MIT///Maxine Singer, President, Carnegie Institute Of Washington///Bruce Sterling
Eric Chivian & Richard Cizik
By Leith Anderson
Scientists and evangelicals slept side by side last summer on the floor of a preschool in the Alaskan village of Shishmaref. We were there to see for ourselves the devastation of climate change on the Inupiaq Eskimos, whose island is eroding into the Chukchi Sea.
The leaders of our small band were the unlikely pair of Eric Chivian, 65 (left, in picture), and Richard Cizik, 56. Chivian shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1985 for his efforts to stop nuclear war, and is now a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of its Center for Health and the Global Environment. Cizik, an ordained Evangelical Presbyterian minister and head of the Office of Government Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), came to prominence 25 years ago when he drafted a letter to President Ronald Reagan inviting him to talk to the NAE. That address became Reagan's "evil empire" speech. The event helped give Evangelicals the political clout they still enjoy.
What brings Chivian and Cizik together is a shared passion for the environment, although they act on that passion in very different ways. Chivian is a highly trained scientist who tells stories like a teacher with the bedside manner of the general-practice physician he used to be. Cizik quotes the Bible, carefully referring to "creation care" rather than climate change or global warming, and advocates a brand of pro-life politics that extends well beyond human conception, up through the care of God's creation itself.
They both have their critics. Why would a scientist like Chivian collaborate with Evangelical Christians who talk about the authority of the Bible and their faith in Jesus Christ? Cizik's detractors say there are more important issues for Evangelicals to tackle, and there is no consensus within the community about global warming anyway.
Coming from different directions, the physician and the preacher combine their influence, persuading Americans to take better care of God's creation. And they practice what they preach: Chivian keeps his thermostat at 60°F (16°C) on cold New England nights, and Cizik drives to work in a Prius hybrid.
Anderson is the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, based in Washington
Peter Pronovost
By Kathleen Kingsbury
In science you learn that the simplest answer is often the best. That's a principle sometimes lost in a world of high-tech medicine—but not on Dr. Peter Pronovost. A critical-care researcher at Johns Hopkins University, Pronovost may have saved more lives than any laboratory scientist in the past decade by relying on a wonderfully simple tool: a checklist.
In the U.S., hospital-acquired infections affect 1 in 10 patients, killing 90,000 of them and costing as much as $11 billion each year. Pronovost, 43, began investigating this alarming trend at Johns Hopkins' hospital in 2001 and concluded that arming physicians with a chart reminding them of each step in routine procedures drastically reduces the medical errors that lead to such infections. After he published his results in several prominent journals, the medical community started listening. Michigan hospitals began implementing Pronovost's checklists in ICUs in 2003. Within three months, hospital-acquired infections at typical ICUs in the state dropped from 2.7 per 1,000 patients to zero. More than 1,500 lives were saved in the first 18 months.
Numbers like this get noticed. California and Spain top a long list of places that soon hope to replicate Michigan's results. Pronovost says the checklist protocol could be rolled out nationwide within two years for less than $3 million. With health-care costs mounting, it's nice to know that one solution requires simply returning to basics.
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