AS04: The oddballs dominate

Quiz: Name the person Arnie's character in the Terminator films was sent back in time to kill.

Any poll such as Agenda Setters 2004 usually throws up a few well-known names. But, Tony Hallett asks, why should some lose out this year to lesser-known individuals?

Last year, after all the debating and vote counting and scrutinising of final positions, one of the features that appeared on silicon.com about our Agenda Setters rankings was entitled: 'AS03: The billionaires club'. This year most of the super-rich in tech, telecoms and media have lost out to lesser-known individuals.

Whereas last year saw the appearance of famous bosses such as Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Oracle's Larry Ellison, Sun's Scott McNealy and Liberty Media's John Malone - all of whom could be branded filthy rich founders (OK, so Ballmer wasn't there right at the beginning) - this year they are all conspicuous by their absence.

So too is HP's Carly Fiorina. (Indeed the highest place woman this year, not for the first time, is eBay CEO Meg Whitman at 13, deemed much more interesting than Bezos.)

The only super-rich business leaders to make the list again are Steve Jobs at 2, Bill Gates at 7 - tying with open source nemesis Linus Torvalds - Rupert Murdoch at 18 and Michael Dell at 34 (who's way down from 12 last time and 5 in 2002).

Clearly there is a lot more to being influential in high-tech than mere money.

Among the lesser-known individuals making waves this year, we ironically have some people lower down the command chain from the 'usual suspect' employers.

Take Microsoft. No Ballmer, Gates only at 7, yet for the first time we see Dan'l Lewin, a VP of business development, in at 42 and CFO John Connors at 33. On the latter, panellist and Quocirca head of research Clive Longbottom explained: "Connors has made the statement that Microsoft has to drive $1bn out of its cost base. They're having to reform so they don't have so many product groups. It's affecting their marketing, their advertising, how they deal with the channel."

Similarly for Apple there seemed to be recognition that CEO Jobs doesn't do everything. VP Jon Rubinstein (number 39) was singled out for praise as was Brit design guru Jonathan Ive (15). Working at Apple since his mid-twenties, fans have him to thank for the iMac and iPod. Or so it is said.

Could either Gates or Jobs have won the poll outright if there hadn't been votes split across their respective organisations? Quite possibly.

And while established bosses lost out to second- or third-tier execs from other companies, there are a number of individuals in this year's 50 who are very much individuals, though part of wider movements. To reel off a few names: a post-OGC Peter Gershon (at 11), virus writer Sven Jaschan (19), eSkills UK's Karen Price (21), Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig (22), grid computing leader Ian Foster (23), revered writer Donald Knuth (30), free software guru Richard Stallman (44) and Privacy International's Simon Davies (50).

Some of these people will have a lot less money than some of the individuals already mentioned above - some will have less money than you. One is facing a term in prison.

But, said panellist and LSE professor Ian Angell, "[Knuth's] influence is total".

Martin Brampton, panellist and consultant, added: "He has fresh relevance because he has written all these algorithms down and made sure they're in the public domain."

Who looks a suspect inclusion? A politician will often be shunted to a different department where their influence is also strong but will a post-home affairs David Blunkett (he's at 5) or Tom Ridge (4) set agendas for high tech?

There was also a strong debate over the inclusion of James Murdoch. This year marked several firsts. Torvalds and Gates ending locked at 7 was one of them, two generations of the same family on the same list was another.

Rupert Murdoch topped this poll in 2002 but, as one of the judging criteria is longevity, there has been the issue of succession. James Murdoch isn't just the anointed one, it would seem, but someone in his own right doing significant things, in his case at BSkyB.

Nationality-wise, this is only the second time a Brit has won the Agenda Setters poll. (The last time was Vodafone's Chris Gent in 2000, fresh from mega-acquisitions.) The top 10 comprises five Americans, three Britons, a Swede and a Finn.

And while this article and others relating to this year's Agenda Setters rankings have mentioned the free spirits, many of whom are behind open source initiatives, spare a thought for Bernard C Soriano, a CIO working for the state of California - and thus governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He may be 'this year's Christian Ude', the Mayor of Munich who made it to 20 in 2003 for deciding to ditch Microsoft software, but consider who everyone's favourite Austrian-American was sent back in time to assassinate in the Terminator films.

Answer: John Connor. At 33 this year was Microsoft's CFO. OK, so there's an extra 's' in John Connors… but you get the idea - he has a fight on his hands.