Inc's Best Entrepreneurs of the Decade (and Why Jeff Skoll Should Be On The List)

Last week, Inc. magazine published its list of the top entrepreneurs of the decade. As with any list, their logic was pretty subjective. What's more, there is a particular absence of social or environmental innovators. Still, the list is chock full of people who have built beloved companies and created immense value for their customers, and many have, in the process, fundamentally disrupted and changed their industries. It's a list worth learning from, no matter what type of entrepreneur you are, but I would make one addition.

The two types I'm interested are the disrupters and the upstarts. The disrupters - notably Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos - are people who have fundamentally shifted industries. Steve Jobs has revolutionized most things he's touched, whether it be the personal computer, the music industry, the phone, or even the movies (remember Pixar, guys). Bezos has a more limited range of activity so far, but Amazon.com has not only changed the way we buy books, it remains the internet's online retailer homebase.

The upstarts - notably Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Williams/Biz Stone - are the new disrupters who are not necessarily changing old industries as much as inventing new ones. Zuckerberg's Facebook has 350 million users, and Williams/Stone's Twitter is shifting the way we broadcast messages and act as content curators for our friends. I believe we've yet to scratch the surface of the impact of these platforms on individuals, groups, and entire societies.

At the intersection of those two categories is Google, which remains perhaps the most fascinating company on the planet. In the short history of the commercial internet, Google is perhaps the most powerful success story. Two engineering geeks build a better search engine and launch a business based on trust (and a new form of advertising) around it. As it grows, it seems like nothing is outside of Google's domain, and now we wonder not only what's next, but if it's gone too far. Where Google goes next and whether the public continues to view them as a force for good (instead of a Microsoft style anti-competition machine) will be fascinating to watch.

In terms of who I would add to the list for social entrepreneurs, the person that sticks out most notably to me is Jeff Skoll. He helped launch eBay, and since leaving the company has converted his billions into the Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a film company - Participant Media - that has produced socially provocative films like "Good Night and Good Luck" and "An Inconvenient Truth." Recently, he's also launched a new Urgent Threats Fund.

While there are incredible social entrepreneurs running amazing organizations around the world, Skoll deserves to be on this list because of his multi-tiered approach to building the field of social entrepreneurship and changing the world.

Right now, we're sort of stuck in a presumption that social sector leaders are committed to the organizations they found for life. I've never been able to accept that this is the best way to maximize impact for either the organization or the entrepreneur, and I hope and believe that in the next ten years, it will become more normal for social entrepreneurs to build multiple organizations. Skoll is a model, and Inc. should update their list to include him.

(Photo: JRandomF)