No. 14 Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft

Last year's position: Not placed

As Bill Gates takes a tumble on the Agenda Setters list, fellow Microsoft man Steve Ballmer's star is in the ascendancy. Ballmer didn't even make the Agenda Setters list in 2004, now he takes fourteenth place.

Microsoft itself may be more of an agenda follower than an Agenda Setter but the last 12 months has seen the Redmond giant diversifying ever further and entering new areas, such as VoIP, for the first time.

While Ballmer may not be the creative force in the company, there's no doubt his influence is writ large at Microsoft and in the wider IT industry. "He's the bruiser, the one who gets things done," says one panellist of the CEO.

Ballmer is even beginning to generate the same level of media fascination as Gates, with his infamous 'iPod users steal music' and 'I'll kill Google's CEO' comments.

However, Ballmer earns his place not for his soundbites but for his business acumen. Microsoft has grown its revenue by billions in recent quarters, or, as Microsoft's CFO put it "nearly two eBays" - and Redmond has Ballmer to thank for that.