1. Jeff Bezos, Amazon

AGE: 49

LAST YEAR’S RANKING: 3

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: In a dark-horse move that set both the old and new media aflutter, Bezos bought The Washington Post in August, confirming that there is no industry that he does not see as ripe for disruption. Amazon has no serious rivals in online retail, the stock price is up more than sevenfold since 2008, and the only question is how far Bezos can expand his reach, prompting The New York Times to call him “the natural heir of Steve Jobs as the entrepreneur with the most effect on the way people live now.” New ventures include putting storage lockers in cities to make it easy for customers to pick up their orders, an online auction house, and an ambitious attempt to produce its own TV shows—a direct challenge to Netflix.

BIG MOVE: Bezos spent much of the summer working at Lab126, Amazon’s Silicon Valley-based hardware-design laboratory, where the company’s Kindle tablet was created. Rumor has it Amazon may be building its own cell phone or a TV set-top box.

OFF THE CLOCK: In March, Bezos spent three weeks at sea with a team of explorers in the Atlantic Ocean and retrieved the Apollo 11 F-1 engines.