If you are someone interested in the world of business, your biggest goal may to be the CEO of a high-performing company. Jim Collins introduced the flywheel as a metaphor for the power of strong business leadership. According to Collins, a company does not shift from good to great overnight, but rather excellence is achieved by “relentlessly pushing a giant heavy flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.” Once that flywheel begins spinning, it typically keeps going.
So, all of the top performing companies thrive due to the tireless efforts of their leaders who are constantly seeking ways to be innovative and push boundaries in order to achieve success which has led them to become the influential business people they are today. With that said, let’s take a look at some of the most powerful CEOs in the world today.
Jeff Bezos, the current CEO of Amazon has recently topped the list as the world’s richest man and is the only person with twelve digits next to his name. Not only was he listed in the top ten of the most powerful CEOs, but he was also listed as the most powerful CEO in the world, and he was also listed in the top ten of the world’s most powerful people in general. He has a net worth of $132.4 billion and his internet retail giant, Amazon, is worth north of $780 billion with its stock price up 70% over the last year. A key reason for Amazon’s massive success recently was its purchase of the supermarket chain Whole Foods last August. Amazon has also opened physical bookstores and is seeing massive growth in its cloud business.
Larry Page was the only other CEO listed in the top ten of the most powerful people on Earth along with Jeff Bezos. Page is the CEO of Google’s parent, Alphabet. Larry Page currently has a net worth of $51.1 billion, and when he is not running the world’s largest search engine, he has an investment in a self-piloting flying taxi company called Kitty Hawk.
Despite the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which dropped him from the top ten world’s most powerful people list, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook remains one of the most powerful executives in the world. After his widely publicized testimony to Congress, Facebook’s share went up 4.5% meaning his statements had a positive effect on shareholders. Currently third on the list of the most powerful CEOs, Zuckerberg is also the youngest CEO on the list at the age of 33. He has a net worth of $74 billion and his company Facebook is worth more than half a trillion dollars.