Word: listings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...accident that our list is almost entirely American. It does include Sony's Akio Morita, and it arguably could include a handful of other leaders from abroad, notably Japan's Soichiro Honda and Eiji Toyoda (Toyota), Italy's Giovanni Agnelli (Fiat) and Australia's Rupert Murdoch (now a U.S. citizen). But if the 20th century was, as Luce also said, the American Century, it was largely because our system, espousing freedom of markets and freedom of the individual, rewarding talent instead of class and pedigree, bred a group of leaders whose single-minded fixation on getting rich--and creating great...
...also no accident that the list includes only one woman, Estee Lauder, and only one industry, cosmetics, in which other women--including Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein and Mary Kay Ash--also flourished as entrepreneurs. And although this issue includes an article on an influential black entrepreneur, no people of color make our Top 20. Through most of this century, American business has been dominated by men, white men, despite more than 25 years of modern feminism and some ambitious corporate efforts to achieve racial equality. The next century will certainly be different, although I don't see meaningful change coming...
Financiers, including A.P. Giannini (Bank of America) and Charles Merrill (Merrill Lynch), make our list, but some might argue that finance is underrepresented, since it was the availability of capital, as much or more than individual genius or initiative, that so often created the conditions for business success. By that measure, Drexel Burnham's Michael Milken, who raised billions for the likes of Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch and MCI Corp., should be included, notwithstanding his conviction for violating securities laws and his time spent in jail. Other financial innovators who changed the way we spend and save might also have...
...most serious economic crisis since the Depression, my own vote for economist of the century goes to Milton Friedman, whose books, including Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose (written with his wife Rose), articulate the importance of free markets and the dangers of undue government intervention. Our list, recognizing only 20 people, is by definition subjective, especially since we sought to recognize leadership in several different industries. If, as I believe, the automobile is the product of the century, we could easily have filled the list with the names of famous automakers, including Alfred P. Sloan, Charles Kettering...
...bias toward innovators and company founders and against managers kept several famous names off the list--not only Sloan, whose organizational and management skills helped consolidate several disparate automakers into General Motors, but also a number of chief executives best known for their ability to manage large enterprises and increase shareholder value. It should be remembered that Ford Motor Co. was foundering when Henry Ford died, and it was left to his grandson Henry Ford II to revive the company after World War II with the help of a group of button-down managers, the "Whiz Kids," including Robert McNamara...