Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Fast Company Magazine 100 Most Creative People Issue

Some interesting content from the Fast Company annual 100 Most Creative People in Business issue.



Keeping in mind the Fast Company guideline of not featuring anything on a prior 100 most creative list (nope, no Steve Jobs in this issue), here's the vignettes that stood out...

Wadah Khanfar / Al Jazeera at #1 - Not to discount what Khanfar and Al Jazeera have done, but what struck me was mention of the Qatari government ownership... and willingness to lose what Khanfar says was "much more than $80M last year." Not a promising statement for the field of Journalism when this appears to be what it takes for a major player in News like Al Jazeera to emerge.

Sal Khan / Khan Academy at #7 - I a few weeks ago posted on and linked to this Businessweek profile of Khan and view the guy and his efforts as just plain remarkable.

Ted Sarandos / Netflix at #22 - Remarkable how the company has completely remade themselves for a digitized streaming content world.

Sitaram Asur / HP Labs at #26 - Profile includes mention of HP Labs fellow Bernardo Huberman... whose efforts around Prediction Markets were featured in Businessweek back in 2005.

Laura Ching / Tiny Prints at #60 - Impressive products from the online stationery company recently acquired by Shutterfly.

Kevin Systrom / Instagram at #66 - One of those companies that I just keep hearing about.

Natsumi Iwasaki / Author at #90 - Wrote the Japanese bestseller What If a Female Manager of a High School Baseball Team Read Drucker's 'Management'? Sounds interesting... now, if only there were an English translation...