The Most Influential IT Thought-Leaders
by Peter High, series on Forbes.com
I would like to introduce a new series, which I refer to as “IT Influencers.” The field of Information Technology is home to many innovators and thought-leaders. These individuals, all from vastly differing walks of life, share a commonality: Their expertise and unique insights have made them some of the most influential members in their professions and in IT. This is a diverse lot, including individuals like:
- Walt Mossberg, Journalist/Columnist
- David Pogue, Yahoo! Technology Columnist & CBS News Correspondent
- Salman Khan, Executive Director and Founder of Khan Academy
- Sir James Dyson, Inventor, Industrial Designer & Founder of Dyson Company
- Dr. James Goodnight, CEO of SAS Institute
- Sebastian Thrun, CEO and Co-Founder of Udacity
- Rich Karlgaard, Publisher of Forbes
- Yves Béhar, Founder and Principal Designer of Fuseproject
- Vicente Fox, Former President of Mexico
- Emerson Spartz, CEO of Spartz Media
- Dion Weisler, Executive Vice President of HP’s Printing and Personal Systems Organization
- Peretz Lavie, President of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
- Marc Lore, CEO and Founder of Jet
- Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard
- Ron Ross, Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Scott McNealy, Co-Founder and former CEO of Sun Microsystems
- Steve Case, Co-Founder of AOL
- John Hagel, Chairman of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge
- Mike Schroepfer, CTO of Facebook
- Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist
- Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack
- Peter Diamandis, Co-Founder of XPRIZE and Singularity University
- Jay Rogers, CEO of Local Motors
- Andrew Ng, Co-Founder of Coursera
- Cathy Bessant, Chief Operations & Technology Officer of Bank of America
- Dave Evans & Bill Burnett, Co-Authors of “How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life”
- Stanley McChrystal, Partner at McChrystal Group
- Ken Xie, CEO of Fortinet
- Alan Trefler, Founder & CEO of Pegasystems
- Roger Martin, Institute Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute
- Andrew Moore, Dean of The School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University
- Vint Cerf, ‘Father of the Internet’ and Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist
- Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former President of Estonia
- Mike Volpi, General Partner at Index Ventures
- Kai-Fu Lee, Founder of Sinovation Ventures
- John Chambers, Former CEO of Cisco Systems
- Matt Harris, Managing Director at Bain Capital Ventures
- Max Tegmark, MIT Professor and Author of Life 3.0
- Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partner and Co-founder of LinkedIn
- Michael Lewis, New York Times Best-Selling Author
- Chris Young, CEO of McAfee
- Laszlo Bock, CEO of Humu
- Sarah Guo, General Partner at Greylock Partners
- Rick Smith, CEO of Axon
- Tom Siebel, CEO of C3.ai
- Andrés Gluski, President & CEO of AES
- Steven Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone
- Simon Sinek, Author of The Infinite Game
In the kick-off article to the series, I highlight some common denominators among these trailblazers:
- All of them have thought about business value first, and technology second
- Most have worked in other business disciplines prior to ascending to the CIO role
- Many work within organizations that promote from within
- A majority have an MBA or advanced degree in a business discipline
- Many also have spent time as consultants