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James Murdoch, BSkyB CEO
Position: 22 Last year: 21
Why? Recognising the home as a technology battleground
Agree with panel rating?
James Murdoch may have slipped one place since last year, when a couple of smart moves turned Sky from a pay-TV provider into a telecoms provider, but he is still highly rated by the panel for what BSkyB is doing to converge entertainment formats in the home.
The judges were impressed with the introduction of the Sky+ Box home hub, which could compete with the PC server's position in the consumer market as a single device for music, video and internet access.
One judge said: "One of the points about James Murdoch is that he gets that the whole idea - that Sky has to be more than just a media broadcaster, distributor and content creator. It also has to offer all the technology elements that plug it all together."
A Harvard dropout, Murdoch started his career in the music industry, until he finally entered the family business at News Corp. He is now expected to succeed his father at the helm.
His broadband bundling offer and acquisition of ISP Easynet indicate that when that time comes, News Corp will lead the way in adopting new technology and integrating it with entertainment.
Take a walk down memory lane - and find out who made the Agenda Setters poll in years past:
"Blogging's definitely got to the point where there're enough mainstream consumers watching it for the top bloggers to be regarded as agenda setters."
Michael Smith,
Agenda Setters panellist
"Open source gets more important rather than being something that will get squeezed out of the enterprise."
Simon Briskman,
Agenda Setters panellist
The world's 50 most innovative companies BusinessWeek
The world's 100 most powerful women Forbes.com
Chron 500 - The San Francisco Bay Area's top public companies San Francisco Chronicle
100 fastest growing tech companies Business 2.0
Content featuring James Murdoch
The rise of a younger, more natively web-focused generation of media figures is also underlined by the relatively high placing of Murdoch's son James on the list for the second year running. As a journalist, Bell has written widely on media issues...
In a similar vein to Charles Dunstone at 42 - though admittedly Dunstone has the bread-and-butter role of being the largest retailer of mobile devices in Europe - James Murdoch can point to an interesting position in the world of comms.
Murdoch is a man who has shaped modern media to a greater degree than any other individual, revitalising an ailing newspaper industry and pioneering satellite TV. Murdoch suffered a cancer scare in 2000, which fuelled rumours he would soon stand...
Past number ones include Ray Ozzie (now at Microsoft), Ashley Highfield (BBC), Eric Schmidt (Google), Steve Jobs, Rupert Murdoch, Chris Gent (Vodafone) and former AOL top dog Steve Case - remember him?
Our reporter in Amsterdam covering the latest on the Easynet situation a year post-Sky buy was disappointed on Thursday morning as James Murdoch couldn't make it over from London "because of the snow".
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