These innovators are true industry disruptors and visionaries

Friday October 27, 2017 , 4 min Read

Innovators have been long thought of as singular visionaries who have changed the world with their efforts and passion. Their relentless efforts, that go unnoticed in parties or media launches, have been the single reason behind why they are so successful beyond their own expectations. How do these innovators affect our everyday lives? Ever heard of Google? Chances are that you use Google for home, work, and travel. That’s 80-90 % of our waking lives. Ever heard of Yahoo? They used to be a part of our working life, until they didn’t innovate anymore and got taken over by other bigger brands. Here are some visionaries that have completely changed the way we look at innovation and live our daily lives:

Image: Shutterstock

Jack Ma, CEO, Alibaba

Why is Jack Ma on this list? Because he’s failed more than a dozen times in almost everything he tried to do early on. Harvard rejected him 10 times, his investors backed out on him 20 times, and he’s pitched to every single friend and family member he could find to help him out. He struggled like no other innovator of our generation, and he’s possibly found the most amount of success in his later years. Here’s a video of him pitching to investors in 1999. You can really see his vision and passion light up when he’s talking about competing with the US at the infancy stage of his company.

The best part of this video? When Jack says, “All of our brains are as good as theirs”.

Here are some of Jack’s accomplishments – personal wealth of over $40 billion; smashing the world record for most inventory sold on a single day in 2016 (Single’s day $17 billion GMV); increasing market cap by 81 % this year; and $7 billion in quarterly revenue in the last three months. He’s innovated beyond anyone’s expectation and made Alibaba one of the biggest companies in the world. His vision makes him one of the greatest innovators of our time

Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla, SpaceX, etc.

Of course, Elon had to be on the list. He’s a genius! He’s created some of the most innovative companies in the world, and he’s built it all in record time. He’s going to Mars, he’s expanding ground travel, and he’s building solar cars. There is nothing that this real life “Iron Man” can’t do. He’s even co-founded PayPal, which was one of the most innovative companies in the financial services/payment processing industries in the world. He made about $120 million from his subsequent buy-out, and invested it all in his new companies Tesla and SpaceX. He just wanted to innovate, and his journey from South Africa to Silicon Valley is an inspiration beyond anyone’s wildest belief.

Dmitry Itskov, CEO, 2045

Not a lot of people know about Dmitry, but many may have heard about the Singularity project and Ray Kurzweil. Dmitry is a Russian billionaire entrepreneur who co-founded a news media website that’s one of the largest ones in Russia. Now he is all set to figure out how to combine human and technological intelligence into one singular system through his 2045 mission. He’s working with scientists, researchers, and some of the most brilliant minds in the tech industry to get to a state where, by 2045, we will be fused with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to finally expand ourselves beyond it all.

What will you be able to do by 2045? Upload your brain to a computer! That’s what Dmitry is working on. He’s an innovator beyond our times, and is working on solving a problem that few have ever conceived about. Dmitry will not stop until he’s seen his vision through, and his humility and work ethic are what make him so successful in his pursuit.

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