Most admired entrepreneurs across the globe

Greatest living entrepreneurs across the globe:

Jeff Bezos Founder, Amazon.com. From a simple start selling books online, Bezos is getting ever closer to living up to his promise to bring us the world.

Richard Branson Founder, Virgin Group. Remember when Virgin was only a record company? We don't either. There are now more than 400 brands under the Virgin umbrella.

Steve Case Co-Founder, America Online. Steve Case brought dial-up Internet access to the masses—when that was really, really exciting.

Barbara Corcoran Co-founder, Corcoran Group. Her real estate success tagged her not just as an entrepreneur but a personality.

Bill Gates Co-founder, Microsoft. He changed the nature of information and collaboration. Then, as a philanthropist, he took that kind of game-changing thinking to a different sphere.

Reid Hoffman Co-founder, LinkedIn. A serial entrepreneur and investor who founded not only LinkedIn but was on the board of PayPal at its founding.

Wayne Huizenga Founder, Waste Management, Blockbuster, and AutoNation. A serial entrepreneur who's been able to find success in vastly different industries.

Magic Johnson Point guard, forward, AIDS activist, and entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, he's probably best known for his ongoing efforts to reinvigorate Harlem.

Herb Kelleher Founder, Southwest Airlines. Kelleher made flying fun again, and continues to give it his best shot, with cheap fares and unassigned seats.

Phil Knight Co-founder, Nike. Knight started by selling track shoes out of the trunk of his car, and will in all likelihood finish with a global fitness juggernaut.

Elon Musk Co-founder, PayPal. Best known for the founding of PayPal, Musk is also the entrepreneur behind Tesla Motors and SpaceX.

Larry Ellison Co-founder, Oracle. Built Oracle into a $150 billion enterprise, and counting. Known to embrace competition in all its forms, from bashing competitors to sailing.

Charles Schwab Founder, Charles Schwab Crop. Revolutionized the brokerage industry with the first flat-rate commissions. His namesake firm is now worth just under $20 billion.

Martha Stewart Founder, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Housekeeping was boring before Stewart came along. Then it became a glamorous, upscale $273 million enterprise.

Diane Von Furstenberg Founder, Diane Von Furstenberg. Furstenberg parlayed a hugely popular wrap dress into a global business. She is also the founder of Salvy, a French publishing house.

Jerry Yang Co-founder, Yahoo. Yahoo, though currently embattled, is one of the few companies not only to survive the dotcom boom but keep on growing.

Michael Bloomberg Founder, Bloomberg L.P. New Yorkers may know him as Mayor Mike, but perhaps no company has become more influential on Wall Street than his Bloomberg.

Bobbi Brown Founder, Bobbi Brown. A stylist who couldn't find the makeup she wanted to wear, she launched her own line. It's now in nearly 1,000 stores and more than 50 countries.

Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield Co-founders, Ben and Jerry's Homemade. The ice cream gurus brought us Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey, as well as conscious capitalism, well ahead of its time.

Debbi Fields Founder, Mrs. Fields. Cookies were just cookies before Mrs. Fields, which did for chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin what Starbucks did for coffee.

Andy Grove Co-founder, Intel. You can't have an information revolution without chips to process the information, and Intel has been doubling chips' intelligence every 18 months for decades.

Tony Hsieh Founder, Zappos. Yes, Hsieh continues to sell lots of shoes under the Amazon umbrella, but the company is really known for its heroic customer service.

Arianna Huffington Founder, Huffington Post. Huffington brought a new business model to online news and content generation, and is regularly cited on “most influential” lists.

Robert Johnson Founder, Black Entertainment Television. Johnson, who sold BET to Viacom in 2001, also holds the distinction of being the first African-American billionaire.

Vinod Khosla Co-founder, Sun Microsystems. Khosla was the first CEO of Sun from 1982-1984. He now runs his own venture capital firm, managing about $1 billion.

Ralph Lauren Founder, Ralph Lauren. Best known for its Polo Ralph Lauren line of clothing, Lauren has grown his company to a $16 billion lifestyle giant.

Larry Page & Sergey Brin Co-founders, Google. It started as a research project. Now, Google's goal of bringing us ‘all the world's information' doesn't seem so crazy anymore.

Howard Schultz Co-founder, Starbucks. Built a $40 billion enterprise based largely on the premise that it's okay to spend $3 for a cup of coffee.

Russell Simmons Founder, Def Jam. Simmons has expanded his business from music to clothing, and is now thought to be the third-richest figure in hip-hop.

Ted Turner Founder, CNN. Turner not only founded Atlanta's - and now the world's - Cable News Network, but has won the America's Cup and become a noted philanthropist.

Oprah Winfrey Founder, CEO, chair, Harpo Productions. This media personality has been ranked both as the richest African American and the most influential woman in the world.

Mark Zuckerberg Co-founder, Facebook. Facebook, at first only open to college students, has almost become an alternative Web in itself. Its IPO could be the largest U.S. offering ever.