Who Is The Ultimate Game Changer In Business?

HuffPost's Game Changers series celebrates 100 innovators, visionaries, and leaders in 12 categories who, whether working in the spotlight or under the radar, are changing how we look at the world and the way we live in it. We salute them for their willingness to look at things and take the risk of saying, "I think I have a better way."

You've voted on your favorites and chosen Paul Volcker as the Ultimate Game Changer in Business for 2010. Voting is now closed.

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Mo Ibrahim

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Changed the game by ... investing with his heart and his wallet in Africa. Ibrahim is a Sudanese-born British telecom mogul who was one of the first to realize that building a mobile phone network in Africa would be both good business and good for spreading the technology of democracy. By 2005, his company had footprints in 15 African countries and he reportedly sold it for over $3 billion. Now he heads the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which, among other good deeds, offers a $5 million prize to democratic African leaders. (No one won this year). His private equity fund, Satya Capital, also invested at least $200 million in Africa this year. “I would not be investing in Africa if I’m not bullish about Africa,” he told Reuters. Key kudos: Nelson Mandela is a big fan of Ibrahim's work. "Mo Ibrahim has a vision to promote and recognize good governance that will drive Africa's political and economic renaissance," he said in a published testimonial. Must-click link: The Ibrahim Foundation's site

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Changed the game by ... investing with his heart and his wallet in Africa. Ibrahim is a Sudanese-born British telecom mogul who was one of the first to realize that building a mobile phone network in Africa would be both good business and good for spreading the technology of democracy. By 2005, his company had footprints in 15 African countries and he reportedly sold it for over $3 billion. Now he heads the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which, among other good deeds, offers a $5 million prize to democratic African leaders. (No one won this year). His private equity fund, Satya Capital, also invested at least $200 million in Africa this year. “I would not be investing in Africa if I’m not bullish about Africa,” he told Reuters.

Key kudos: Nelson Mandela is a big fan of Ibrahim's work. "Mo Ibrahim has a vision to promote and recognize good governance that will drive Africa's political and economic renaissance," he said in a published testimonial.

Must-click link: The Ibrahim Foundation's site

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Comments

[AngusC]

07:57 AM on 10/22/2010

Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of Jay Z's music, but he is over-hyped beyond belief.

The way this is written you would think he owned The Nets or something rather than the reality that he owns less than 5% and has less than $10 million invested in the team.
The only reason the real owner the billionaire Russian let him get so much face time is that Jay Z led him to believe that he could influence LeBron to come to The Nets.
Now that that fell through, he has outlived his usefulness.

[G D]

02:56 PM on 10/22/2010

I would love to own 5% of any professional team. I just love how you just put him down for something that you surely haven't and probably will never accomplish.

[falco]

07:37 PM on 10/21/2010

Let's not go overboard with Jay Z This is the kind of stuff he is responsible for:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir8BO4-7DkM

Thanks Jay Z for helping to contribute to the sexualization of our children.

[ibsteve2u]

01:03 PM on 10/21/2010

But how can We, the People fight (http://www.wallstreetwatch.org/reports/executive_summary.pdf):

[bq]
During the period 1998-2008:
• Accounting firms spent $81 million on campaign contributions and $122 million on lobbying;
• Commercial banks spent more than $155 million on campaign contributions, while investing nearly $383 million in officially registered lobbying;
• Insurance companies donated more than $220 million and spent more than $1.1 billion on lobbying;
• Securities firms invested nearly $513 million in campaign contributions, and an additional $600 million in lobbying
[eq]

And that was BEFORE bank lobbying expenses shot up another 12% in 2009 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/16/bank-lobbying-expenditure_n_463560.html)?

BEFORE the Supreme Court used Citizens United to directly assault the power of the individual American voter?

I see the American people rapidly being cornered into a scenario that has only three possible outcomes:

• Economic slavery, and a rapid retreat to the America of the 1870s when starvation and death from illness was a very real threat

• The rise of a valid third Party that treats accepting money from special interests as a betrayal of the American people, and thus treason

• The seemingly hysterical response of revolution

While I yearn to rule that third possibility out, I can no longer lie myself into believing that those whom the Republicans and too many Democrats represent will "self-correct"; their mounting expenditures for members of Congress scream otherwise.

[guveqzero]

12:41 PM on 10/21/2010

Just goes to show, sometimes old people are right on.

[uhavenoface]

08:47 PM on 10/14/2010

i vote for my dilznick

[noodlen11]

07:25 PM on 10/14/2010

I didn't bother to read the article because I read the others and they were quite biased. In my opinion, if you are talking about a do gooder, bill gates. Getting all the wealthy to donate most of their money. If you are talking stictly business and in America Steve Jobs. Another do gooder should have been the company out of PA who devoted their engineering power to rescue the miners in Chile

[NYCBri]

02:25 PM on 10/14/2010

The NYTimes reporters definately deserve this title. Volcker comes in at a close 2d.

[luziannagirl]

08:26 AM on 10/07/2010

Not much of a hip hop fan, but this old lady thinks JayZ is really cute...

[abbadabba]

08:31 PM on 10/06/2010

Are Story and Morgenson the double minted golden twins? Next to Gretchen, Ms. Story is my next fave business scout at NYTs! Those are two powerful women who I equate to superheros. Batwoman and Bat Girl. Get 'em, ladies!

[abbadabba]

08:25 PM on 10/06/2010

I'm not even having to choose. When I saw Gretchen Morgenson, I saw the voice who blew the lid off the derivatives' circus peanut money market. She shared what the big boys already knew. Their Jenga Tower of bogus MBSs and their phantom CDO/CDSs were a smoldering pile.

She's also all over the fraudulent way Wall Street has managed this "modification" and forclosure system and has seen to it courts know the time line to draw in order to call the investor a sucker or a stupid should have known better.

Her Feb. 2007 story on CDSs blew the Dome off their Tea Pot. My first thought upon reading it was, "Crash of '29!" But sober analysis revealed it was more like the Panic of 1907.

So, what ever the domain, she's my Game Changer. Keep it up, Gretchen and maybe we can turn this unfocuesd anger at everything into change that Wall Street can believe in.

Dry stuff unless you know the charcters of Wall Street, but hose Pirates lost their golden ruled treasure maps thirty years ago.

[nfatt1]

08:49 PM on 10/03/2010

Im sorry, bur if you don't know who the CEO of the company you work for is , you should't be there.

[Lili Q]

11:10 PM on 10/02/2010

The ultimate game changer in business as well as politics, are the unnamed technicians who carefully manipulate public appearances and us versus them enticements to permeate the conscious desires of the masses, so that a sea of active supporters for whatever view, whatever product, whatever political opinion is expendient or desired--is instantaneously produced--much like matter springing apparently randomly from theorized singularilty.
Brainwashing is the game changer.

[Tathagata Tathagore]

08:16 PM on 10/06/2010

While the internet remains fairly free (believe me corporations and government will soon try to destroy the interne) people can make contacts to prepare to try to turn government, including world government to a democratic system not a hegemony of the powerful.
www.paraculture.org

[RKTesq]

02:35 PM on 10/02/2010

And look how well they were rewarded for all their hard work. Congress created legislation expressly to protect such practices of poor, exploited firms such as Goldman Sachs from being exposed by big, bad, mean investigative reporters such as Morgenson and Story. I believe Obama refers to it as, "financial reform legislation."

Watch for Larry Summers to push through self-perpetuating such legislation before he dances out of DC in December with the keys to the Treasury. Upon hearing the news, Obama will respond, "Huh?"

P.S. I actually like Obama. And I'm a 40-year Democrat. But I'm not nearly as stupid as Obama hopes.

[leedonaldson127]

03:29 AM on 10/02/2010

What about this as potential:
http://ageofaquariusbyleedonaldson.blogspot.com/2010/10/age-of-aquarius.html?spref=tw

[VerizonCells]

05:45 PM on 09/29/2010

Jay-Z is a game changer for taking Muammar al-Gaddafi money to play at his sons birthday bash in St. Barts.

What a joke...