 No. 3 Niklas Zennstrom, co-founder and CEO, Skype
Last year's position: Not placed
In his late 30s, at the lower end of Agenda Setter ages, Zennstrom has been pretty disruptive in a pretty short period of time. He is also something of an enigma. Back when he brought us peer-to-peer bad boy Kazaa, this famously taciturn Swede was reluctant to court much publicity.
That software is no longer his concern, though people will rightly say he was a key figure in the ongoing Rights Wars - he helped supply the gun, others took pot shots at record companies and Hollywood.
With Skype, P2P has grown up: it is doing nothing less than causing telcos the world over to re-evaluate their business models. Zennstrom, who spent time at Tele2, has driven a product and movement (though he is far from the only one at the vanguard of the latter) that is all about making phone calls over the internet - for free. Downloads of Skype's client software are gathering pace. It simply sits on desktop computers or PDAs which must have microphones/headphones and is now starting to be used for calls to regular phones too.
One panellist said: "Skype comes from the point of view that instant messaging has been very successful, so let's turn telephony into instant messaging."
A fellow panellist said: "Zennstrom understands the telecoms industry and knows [Skype] is something very revolutionary - he knows what he's going to upset."
It's no accident that Zennstrom's company has a name that rhymes with hype. But with voice over IP (VoIP) bound to be one of the big disruptive technologies of the next few years, who's to say we are not seeing a real change in the fundamentals of communication?
It may not all be down to Zennstrom but he and his company stand for a huge shift. He's in at 3 - from nowhere last year.
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