In just the past few decades we have seen Wal-Mart (Sam Walton), Microsoft (Bill Gates), Google (Brin and Page), Facebook (Zuckerberg), Ikea (Kamprad), Apple(Jobs) and Starbucks (Howard Schultz) become global companies.
GE (Jack Welch) invented the cumulative conglomerate, Warren Buffett created the perennial high return stock portfolio, Fidelity (Ed Johnson III) grew mutual funds to gigantic size, John Bogle created the first Exchange Traded Fund, IBM (Lou Gerstner) re-invented itself, Jeff Bezos (Amazon) created a new type of business, Hank Greenberg with AIG invented a new world of insurance and Citicorp (Sandy Weill) invented the diversified global bank.
This is obviously a tiny segment of a much larger and more impressive list. I’m just suggesting that we live in the time of the greatest commercial minds in history. Only J.D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, J.C. Penny and Theodore Vail seem to match our current crop.