Entrepreneurs Who Rocked Our World ! (Entrepreneur Magazine - May 2007)

Inilah sederet entrepreneur sukses yang bisnisnya memberikan pengaruh , bahkan perubahan dalam kehidupan dunia.

PHIL KNIGHT- Nike
Brilliant branding turned athletic gear into fashionAs a Stanford business student, Knight wrote a shoe company business plan. A few years later, he and a partner started making their own shoes. Celebrity athlete endorsements, plus steady innovation in the shoes' look and performance, propelled Nike to the top. Knight left the CEO job in 2004 but remains chairman. His newest project? An animated movie studio about to release its first feature-length children’s film.




STEVE JOBS
STEVE WOZNIAK- Apple Inc.
Made computers suited for ordinary people.
The Woz designed the guts of the first legendary machines from Apple Computer, founded in 1976, while Jobs is seen as the master marketer. Jobs also transformed computing, first with the Apple I and again with the Macintosh and its graphical interface, before starting paradigm-busting animation studio Pixar and making digital music mainstream with iPod and iTunes. Now Jobs is taking on telephony with the iPhone.



HOWARD SCHULTZ- Starbucks
Morphed a dull commodity into a must-have status symbolSchultz came from the Brooklyn projects, started in business selling Xerox copiers and left corporate life to join a Seattle coffee shop chain when it had only a handful of locations. He bought the company in 1987--and today the global chain, with 12,000-plus locations, is renowned for humane working conditions, superb quality control and $5 cups of coffee. His next effort: selling digital music downloads alongside low-fat lattes.




MARTHA STEWART - Omnimedia

Revolutionized home cooking and entertainingGlamorous enough to spend years as a professional model and bright enough to win a partial scholarship to Barnard College in New York City, Stewart tapped a third talent--unerring taste in cooking, gardening and decorating--to craft an empire that began in 1976 with a modest catering business and made her a billionaire after its public offering. Her next project is a joint venture with a homebuilder to decorate entire subdivisions.




FREDERICK W. SMITH - FedEx
Launched first overnight express delivery serviceWhen Smith bought two small jets in the early '70s, he set out to make cross-country overnight delivery a reality. Few gave his operation much chance of survival, but air cargo deregulation provided an opening in 1977, and his groundbreaking technique of sorting incoming packages at a central facility did the rest. Now FedEx moves 6 million packages worldwide each day, and Smith has moved into printing and copying by acquiring Kinko's.



ROBERT JOHNSON - BET
Founded first cable TV network for a black audienceFirst black billionaire, founder of the first black-controlled company on the New York Stock Exchange, first black owner of a major sports team--Johnson's firsts reveal why he's such a standout. In 1979, he put up $15,000 to start BET. He sold it for $2.3 billion in 1999 and now runs RLJ Companies, with interests in sports, banking, music and other fields.




STEVE CASE - AOL
Made the internet affordable and easy to useAfter starting a tiny online service in 1985, Case triumphed over competitors CompuServe and Prodigy to make America Online the unquestioned leader. The acme arrived in 2000 when Case purchased Time Warner for $165 billion in AOL shares. History's worst annual loss followed--but AOL's innovations, including mailing millions of free software disks and offering flat-rate pricing, changed the internet forever. Now Case has turned his eye to other businesses, including a new payment system called GratisCard that will attempt to rival Visa and MasterCard.

LARRY PAGE

SERGEY BRIN- Google

Revolutionized internet search.

These computer science Ph.D. students left Stanford in 1998 to pursue Google, which employed an innovative, sophisticated technique for ranking pages from internet searches. Google has been remarkable for the restrained yet exceptionally powerful way it has commercialized its valuable search page. Now it's rumored to be developing a "Google OS" to challenge Microsoft.

PIERRE OMIDYAR- eBay

Transformed e-commerce with online auctionsOmidyar's 1995 idea for an online auction has spawned the world's largest marketplace and one of the most successful internet companies. But more important than the financial success of eBay, which turned Omidyar into a billionaire, is its impact on countless other entrepreneurs who have crafted viable businesses out of selling on eBay. Today, Omidyar funds organizations and enterprises that promote social change.

BILL GATESPAUL ALLEN-Microsoft

Dominate global personal computer software.

A fortuitous 1981 contract with IBM paid Microsoft royalties on nearly every IBM-compatible PC manufactured. Microsoft shares made Gates the world's richest individual and allowed Allen, though he left the company for health reasons not long after the IBM deal, to dabble in professional sports, space travel and other ventures. Gates, through his foundation, is now becoming what may be history's greatest philanthropist, focusing on global health and education.

RICHARD BRANSON - Virgin

Unending innovation and expansion into new fieldsBranson's ventures since 1970 in highly competitive fields including music, airlines, telecommunications, health clubs and, lately, space, have all been characterized by his eagerness to challenge authority, as well as his astute business skills and talent for finding unconventional formulas that usually work. At press time, Sir Branson had received tentative approval from the Transportation Department to launch his U.S. airline

MICHAEL DELL-Dell

Changed the way computers were distributed by selling direct

As a college freshman in 1984, Dell began selling custom-built computers from his dorm room. By focusing on selling directly to customers, Dell became one of the world's largest computer-makers--and Compaq and Hewlett-Packard struggled to compete with the efficiency of Dell's model. Today, Dell has dropped "Computer" from the company name--it's now embracing big-screen TVs and other high-end consumer electronics as well as computers.