Alexander Blass

Wharton and Oxford-educated, Alexander Blass is an internationally acclaimed American entrepreneur and innovator. He has traveled to over 40 countries and appeared in hundreds of media outlets, including multiple cover stories. Now 36, he is the youngest grand prize winner ever of the Daily Record's Top Innovator of the Year Award, which credited him with...

Anthony E. Zuiker

As the creator and executive producer of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, one of the highest-rated dramas in television history, Anthony E. Zuiker is tuned-in to America's steep consumer expectations. Not only did Zuiker develop a blockbuster television series; he built an entertainment empire that transformed television programming and advertising. A world-wide phenomenon, the CSI franchise ...

Ben Mezrich

Ben Mezrich has created his own highly addictive genre of nonfiction, chronicling the amazing stories of young geniuses making tons of money on the edge of impossibility, ethics, and morality...

Biz Stone

Biz Stone has been named Nerd of the Year by GQ, one of the Most Influential People in The World by TIME magazine, Entrepreneur of the Decade by Inc Magazine, and one of Vanity Fair's Top Ten Most Influential People of the Information Age but Biz Stone, 37 is best known for over a decade of developing collaborative web systems freely accessed by hundreds of millions of people worldwide...

Buzz Aldrin

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed their Lunar Module on the moon's Sea of Tranquility and became the first two humans to walk on the moon. This unprecedented heroic endeavor was witnessed by the largest worldwide television audience in history. He was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor amongst over 50 other distinguished...

Cameron Sinclair

As the Executive Director and Co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, Cameron Sinclair is not only an architect, but an author, humanitarian and world-class visionary. During his studies at the University of Westminster and at the Bartlett School of Architecture, Cameron developed a passion in social, cultural and humanitarian design. His resulting postgraduate thesis focused on providing...

Chris Bangle

One only needs to look down the street for evidence of Chris Bangle's ingenuity and far-reaching influence. A daring designer whose work has provoked endless discussion, Bangle is best known for his tenure as Chief of Design for the BMW group, where he was responsible for bringing the designs of the BMW, Mini Cooper, and Rolls Royce into the twenty-first century.

Chris Sacca

An accomplished venture investor, private equity principal, company advisor, entrepreneur, and public speaker, Chris manages a portfolio of over three-dozen consumer web, mobile, and wireless technology start-ups as well as an array of mature enterprises through his holding company, Lowercase Capital. Among his representative investments is Twitter Inc., where Chris was one of the first...

Christopher McDougall

When Christopher McDougall first ventured down into Mexico's Copper Canyons, he was a broken-down, ex-athlete who'd been told by top sports scientists that his body was too brittle for even a basic sport like running. But after encountering the Tarahumara Indians, he learned how to access such unexpected natural ability that within nine months, he was able to join the Tarahumara for a 50-mile...

Clayton  Christensen

Clayton M. Christensen is the architect of and the world's foremost authority on disruptive innovation, a framework which describes the process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves 'up market', eventually displacing established competitors. Consistently acknowledged in rankings and surveys as one of the...

Daniel Burrus

Daniel Burrus is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and strategists, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients better understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous, untapped opportunities. He is the author of six...

Daniel Sieberg

Emmy-nominated Daniel Sieberg is the host of Tech This Out! on ABC News NOW and contributes science and technology stories to other ABC News shows including Nightline and Good Morning America. His first book, entitled “The Digital Diet: A Four-Step Plan to Break Your Tech Addiction And Regain Balance In Your Life,” comes out 5/3/11 (Random House/Crown/Three Rivers). Sieberg also contributes to...

Dany Levy

Business owner, journalist and savvy cultural observer, Dany Levy brings a sense of intensity, vision and creative voice to all her endeavors. After graduation from Brown University with a BA in English with honors in creative writing, Levy began her career in 1994 at New York magazine. There, she revamped and edited the Sales and Bargains section in 1996, and subsequently created the...

David Agus

David B. Agus is a Professor of Medicine and Engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering and heads USC’s Westside Cancer Center and the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine. He is one of the world’s leading cancer doctors, and the co-founder of two pioneering health-care technology and wellness companies, Navigenics and Applied...

David de Rothschild

David de Rothschild: David is an adventurer, environmentalist and the founder of MYOO. It is MYOO’s goal to inspire dreams, fuel conversation, share innovations and activate change in order to give nature a voice. David’s passion and commitment to action has seen him ski, dogsled and kite to both the North and South poles as well as visiting some of the world’s most remote and fragile regions...

David Kushner

As a contributing editor of Wired and Rolling Stone and frequent guest on radio and TV from CNN to NPR, he reports on the key leaders and innovators of the information age. Author and journalist David Kushner is the leading expert on the new i-Conomy of digital culture and industry. From the baby billionaires of Silicon Valley (founders of Facebook to YouTube) to the Hollywood mavericks...

David Nour

David Nour is a social networking strategist and one of the foremost thought leaders on the quantifiable value of business relationships. In a global economy that is becoming increasingly disconnected, David and his team are solving global client challenges with intracompany, as well as externally focused, Strategic Relationship Planning.

Duke Stump

A spirited and dynamic brand leader, speaker, teacher and blogger with an unbridled passion for creating what could be. Duke is Principal and Chief Architect of The Northstar Manifesto. A dynamic and progressive brand strategy studio focused on cultivating and nurturing cultural shifts in the world of sustainability. Over the past year, Duke has collaborated with a variety of luminary and...

Eric Ries

New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Eric Ries is an entrepreneur and author of the popular blog Startup Lessons Learned. He cofounded and served as CTO of IMVU, his third startup. He is a frequent speaker at business events, has advised a number of startups, large companies, and venture capital firms on business and product strategy, and is an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard...

Gary Hamel

The Wall Street Journal recently ranked Gary Hamel as the world's most influential business thinker, and Fortune magazine has called him "the world's leading expert on business strategy." For the last three years, Hamel has also topped Executive Excellence magazine's annual ranking of the most sought after management speakers. Hamel's landmark books, Leading the Revolution and Competing for the Future, have appeared on every management bestseller list and have been translated into more than 20 languages. His latest book, The Future of Management, was published by the Harvard Business School Press in October 2007 and was selected by Amazon.com as the best business book of the year.

Gary Vaynerchuk

The world of business is coming full circle. The rise of the Internet and the empowerment of the common consumer has created a fundamental shift in how businesses are expected to behave. To take advantage of this opportunity, businesses will need to look backwards and scale the caring their grandparents' businesses exhibited towards their customers or watch their competition pass them by...

Gentry Humphrey

How do you take a brand from big to huge? How do you make a brand part of the everyday lexicon? Gentry Humphrey, the man who helped make Air Jordans a standard wardrobe accessory, tells audiences how to move consumers by innovating, imagining and inspiring. If you doubt the influence the Jordan Brand has had on popular culture, think about this: Before the first AIR JORDAN...

Grant Achatz

Grant Achatz is the James Beard Foundation’s Outstanding Chef of 2008. His restaurant, Alinea, was named “Best Restaurant in America” by Gourmet Magazine. After opening, Alinea rapidly garnered top ratings from Mobil, AAA, Zagat, the Chicago Tribune, Time Out, Gayot, and was named to the Top 50 Restaurants in the World by Restaurant Magazine, UK.

Howard Behar

Howard Behar is the former president of Starbucks Coffee Company North America and Starbucks Coffee International. He joined Starbucks in 1989 when the company had just begun to venture outside the Northwest region. Initially serving as Vice President of Sales and Operations, he grew the retail business from 28 stores to more than 400 stores by the time he was named president of Starbucks Coffee..

Ian Morrison

Ian is an internationally known author, consultant, and futurist specializing in long-term forecasting and planning with particular emphasis on health care and the changing business environment. He combines research and consulting skills with an incisive Scottish wit to help public and private organizations plan their longer-term future.

James Cameron

Born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada, James Cameron grew up in the historic village of Chippawa, near Niagara Falls. In 1971, he moved to Brea, California where he studied physics at Fullerton Junior College while working as a machinist and, later, a truck driver. Cameron quit his trucking job in 1978 and raised money from local dentists to produce a 35mm short film...

Jason  Silva

Television personality, filmmaker and philosopher, Jason Silva was recently described as "part Timothy Leary, part Ray Kurzweil, and part Neo from The Matrix." Others have described Jason as "A Digital DJ, a re-vitalizer and remixer of optimism, and above all, a curator: of ideas, of inspiration, and of awe... like a trumpet player or modern-day digital Mingus, he jams, riffs and rhapsodizes...

Jeff Ma

As a member of the MIT Blackjack Team, Jeff Ma created an ingenious method for counting cards -- using talent, creativity, math and teamwork to win millions in Vegas. (Card-counting, by the way, is not illegal; casinos just don't like it.) Ma is the subject of the best-selling book Bringing Down the House and the hit movie, 21, which topped the box office in its first two weeks...

Jeff Ng

With his hands in just about everything, 33-year-old Jeffrey Ng aka jeffstaple has masterfully created a world of communicating through design. The founder and owner of Staple Design, Staple Clothing and Reed Space, Jeff is a graphic, web and clothing designer, artist, DJ, writer and entrepreneur. Born in New Jersey, Jeff attended New York University to study journalism. While in college, he...

Jeff Staple

With his hands in just about everything, 33-year-old Jeffrey Ng aka jeffstaple has masterfully created a world of communicating through design. The founder and owner of Staple Design, Staple Clothing and Reed Space, Jeff is a graphic, web and clothing designer, artist, DJ, writer and entrepreneur. Born in New Jersey, Jeff attended New York University to study journalism. While in college, he...

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been working as a professional actor for twenty-three years. He recently starred in award-winning sleeper hit (500) Days of Summer for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe. After adolescence on the TV show 3rd Rock From The Sun, he took a break from acting to attend Columbia University and returned to earn his "indie cred" with films Mysterious Skin...

Joss Whedon

Emmy and Oscar nominee Joss Whedon is one of Hollywood's top creators, scripting several hit films and creating one of television's most critically praised shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Born in New York June 23, 1964, Whedon is a third-generation television writer. His grandfather and father were both successful sitcom writers on shows such as The Donna Reed Show, Leave It to Beaver and...

Ken Levine

Ken Levine is the co-founder, President and Creative Director of 2K Boston (formerly Irrational Games). At 2K Boston, Ken led the creation of the multi-million selling, multiple game-of-the year award winning title BioShock . Prior to Bioshock, Ken wrote the original storyline for Thief: The Dark Project and was the lead designer of System Shock 2...

Martin Eberhard

One of Fortune Magazine's Top Innovators and the man who founded the revolutionary Car Company, Tesla Motors, Martin Eberhard is waking business audiences up to the idea that innovation is the key to success and the key to making green cool. From the Rocket eBook to the Tesla Roadster, the visionary Eberhard is continuously pushing the envelope and changing the way we think of product...

Morgan Webb

Morgan defies all reason as a computer and gaming wizard who's strikingly beautiful, spunky and clever. From simple philosophy student to the programmer's pin-up girl, Morgan Webb had quite a ride. She survived the dot-com bust and found a cushy spot in the offices of TechTV as host of The Screen Savers, doling out daily Windows tips to love-stricken techies.

Ram Charan

"Among the world's most sought after CEO advisers," according to Newsweek, Ram Charan is the business and management consultant who has helped some of the world's most powerful companies—GE, Home Depot, Bank of America—develop, shape and implement their strategic direction. For over forty years, Ram Charan has earned a peerless reputation for seeking out and solving some of the toughest...

Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil has been described as “the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal, and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” and PBS included Ray as one of 16 “revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries. As one of the lead...

Rem Koolhaas

His unique vision and inspirational designs are seen throughout the world. One of the world's most honored architects, a recipient of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2000, Rem Koolhaas is considered one of the world's most brilliant, daring and creative architects. Rem began his career as an architect not by designing a building but by writing a book. His Delirious New..

Robert B.  Tucker

Robert B. Tucker is president of The Innovation Resource (TIR), and an internationally recognized leader in the field of innovation. Formerly an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, Tucker has been a consultant and keynote speaker since 1986...

Rod Beckstrom

Rod Beckström is an entrepreneur and catalyst who has successfully created new businesses and changed established ones through his creative ideas, powerful concepts and passion. He co-authored the bestselling book The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations that presents a new model for analyzing organizations, leadership styles and competitive strategy.

Terry Tamminen

“Arnold Schwarzenegger may have signed the world's toughest anti-global-warming law, but it is Terry Tamminen, his environmental adviser, who is emerging as the state's real [global warming] Terminator.” (TIME Magazine, April 9, 2007). “Terry Tamminen...is probably the most brilliant guy around when it comes to the environment,” says Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, (Outside Magazine, April...

Thomas Dolby

This gifted musician scored a Top 5 hit with his song and video "She Blinded Me With Science" and became one of the first stars of MTV in the early 1980's. He went on to record several multi-platinum albums and perform with the likes of Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Roger Waters, Def Lepperd, Joni Mitchell and Foreigner, and this earned him 5 Grammy® nominations.

Todd  Rundgren

A Wizard, A True Star. The title of Todd Rundgren's 1973 solo album aptly sums up the contributions of this multi-faceted artist to state-of-the-art music. As a songwriter, video pioneer, producer, recording artist, computer software developer, conceptualist, and, most recently, interactive artist (re-designated TR-i), Rundgren has made a lasting impact on both the form and content of popular ....

Trey Ratcliff

Trey Ratcliff (@TreyRatcliff) runs the #1 Travel Photography Blog in the world at StuckInCustoms.com, which receives over half a million monthly page views. Chris Anderson from TED called Trey a "pioneer of HDR photography." HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography is a new paradigm in art that creates images like no one has ever seen before. Trey has had the first HDR photograph to hang in the...

Will Wright

Will Wright has become one of the most successful interactive entertainment designers in the world. Will is the creative force behind the award-winning game franchises SimCity and The Sims and his yet-to-be released game, SPORE. The original SimCity was released in 1989 - the first in a series of games that would soon become one of the most critically-acclaimed franchises in gaming history.

William McDonough

William McDonough is a world-renowned architect and designer and winner of three U.S. presidential awards: the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development (1996), the National Design Award (2004); and the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2003). Time magazine recognized him as a “Hero for the Planet” in 1999, stating that “his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that...

Yves Behar

Designer Yves Behar has produced some of the new millennium's most coveted objects, like the Leaf lamp, the Jawbone headset, and the XO laptop for One Laptop per Child. Over the past decade, Yves Behar and his firm fuseproject have become the design group that companies turn to for a game-changing idea. Take the re-invention of the Bluetooth headset, for one; or the re-envigoration of...