They lead companies that have transformed entire industries and become important agents of change. They are the 10 most innovative leaders on the planet in the pre-covid.
10º
Larry Page, Sergey Brin
- Company:Alphabet
- Appreciation in three years:€425.4 mm
- Earnings in three years (shares):197%
- Innovation Award:50%
9º
Jeff Weiner
- Company:Linkedin
- Appreciation in three years:€ 13.9 mm
- Earnings in three years (shares):96%
- Innovation Award:60%
8º
Reed Hastings
- Company:Netflix
- Appreciation in three years:€ 67.6 mm
- Earnings in three years (shares):1351%
- Innovation Award:50%
7º
Shantanu Narayen
- Company:Adobe Systems
- Appreciation in three years:€ 58.9 mm
- Earnings in three years (shares):365%
- Innovation Award:80%
6º
Marc Benioff
- Company:com
- Appreciation in three years:€ 43.3 mm
- Earnings in three years (shares):143%
- Innovation Award:40%
5º
Satya Nadella
- Company:Microsoft
- Appreciation in three years:€240.9 mm
- Earnings in three years (shares):84%
- Innovation Award:26%
4º
Timothy Cook
- Company:Apple
- Appreciation in three years:€319.7 mm
- Earnings in three years (shares):123%
- Innovation Award:12%
3º
Mark Zuckerberg
- Company:Facebook
- Appreciation in three years:€ 325.8 mm
- Earnings in three years (shares):563%
- Innovation Award:70%
2º
Elon Musk
- Company:Tesla Motors
- Appreciation in three years:€41.6 mm
- Earnings in three years (shares):819%
- Innovation Award:70%
1º
Jeffrey Bezos
- Company:com
- Appreciation in three years:€389.9 mm
- Earnings in three years (shares):366%
- Innovation Award:80%
What did Thomas Edison have that Nikola Tesla didn’t? Well, Tesla died in poverty, while Edison had what professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Nathan Furr of Insead Business School call innovation capital.
Dyer and Furr created the list of leaders with the most innovation capital measuring four fundamental qualities: reputation for innovation (analysis of media coverage in the last five years), networks (on Twitter and Linkedin), history of value creation (based on in the growth of the market value of the respective companies) and investors’ expectations about the future creation of value (measured through the premium that investors attribute to the shares of their company).
This methodology puts the founder of Amazon at the top of the list of the most innovative leaders in the world. “What Jeff Bezos has achieved is, quite possibly, the most remarkable feat I have ever witnessed,” Warren Buffett said when I openly questioned him about the person who had most impressed him in his nearly 80 years of watching the market.
“Because it knew how to develop two businesses (retail and cloud) and, at the same time, transform itself – even under the nose of the competition – into the leader of these industries, redefining them and affirming them as big business”.
