Title: President and CEO, The Priceline Group

Born: January 3, 1966, Hope, British Columbia

Education: BS in economics, Trent University; MA in economics, University of British Columbia; MBA, Harvard Business School

Early Marker: Vice president at Starbucks responsible for acquisitions and new product development.

Big Idea: The former Microsoft exec stepped up to the top job at Priceline in January 2014 after running the group's main revenue generator, Amsterdam-based Booking.com. Since 2011 he has been tackling the challenges of its main advertising outlet, Google, increasingly competing with it for travel-related bookings, of expanding its hospitality-related services, such as with its acquisition of OpenTable, and of retaining its customers as they migrate from desktop to mobile devices.

Wave of the Future: M-commerce, App-economy, experiential economy