With so many tech giants out there, it's hard to decide who has been the most influential. After all, each of us uses a handful of technologies every day and they aren't all made by the same company. Therefore, there's a number of powerful, creative people that give us great ideas and opportunities to create things ourselves.
We asked members of the Forbes Technology Council to name the most influential tech leader of our time. While they didn't all agree, they gave us some insight as to how much we rely on the creations of these greats.
1. Bill Gates
Bill Gates, both through Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has leveraged tech to influence the world like no one else. Sometimes a dominator, others a challenger, sometimes encouraging, nearly always unpopular. But without Microsoft, there would be no Amazon, no SalesForce, no rapid growth of the internet for the last 30 years. Basically, everything we do in tech today is rooted in Bill's legacy. - Timothy McGuire, Sound United
2. Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos is more than a tech leader. He is changing the average lifestyle of people all over the world. The Alexa smart home is changing shopping, and how you interact with your heats, lights, doors and windows. At every level of business and retail, people are worried about being replaced by Amazon. This is driving creativity like you can't believe, with successful stores becoming more experiential than ever before. - Arnie Gordon, Arlyn Scales
3. Elon Musk
A tech leader has true influence if they can impact the thoughts of those outside of tech. Jeff Bezos is an example of a great tech business leader, but Musk makes many non-techies think about their respective impact on the world. Undoubtedly, Musk has influenced people’s thoughts on AI, clean energy and environmental issues by wielding the influence his tech business success has given him. - Tim Maliyil, AlertBoot
4. Linus Torvalds
It's easy to point to Gates or Jobs as the top visionary. However, credit should be given to Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. This open-source operating system powers everything from enterprise software like VMware to embedded and smart devices like the Amazon Echo. Without Linux, it's unlikely that our modern connected age would be the same. His minor software project has made a major impact on the world. - Jason Gill, The HOTH
5. Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs is the man who put the world into our pockets. Ask Generation Z people if they can picture the world before the iPhone and you will likely hear some hilarious storytelling. An entire generation was now born and raised in the smartphone era and there is no turning back. They carry their whole lives with them at all times and the world can be senseless to them otherwise. That's true influence. - Nick Chandi, PayPie
6. Evan Spiegel
The most disruptive tech entrepreneur of our era is 28-year old SnapChat CEO, Evan Spiegel. He proposed to supermodel girlfriend Miranda Kerr via a Snapchat filter. After he turned down down a $30B acquisition deal from Google, he succeeded where Google Failed with wearable sunglass technology. Every major social network has imitated the company's stories feature from Facebook to Skype. - Anthony Delgado, Disrupt
7. Mark Zuckerberg
Love him or hate him, Mark Zuckerberg is dominating social networks. Not only does he own Facebook, but also Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus VR and many others. He is a visionary that is always a step ahead, thinking of the next big acquisition and how to implement effective monetization strategies. - Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster
8. Andrew Jassy
Andrew Jassy is the force behind Amazon Web Services. Jassy runs one of the most aggressive areas in the enterprise tech world today and is encouraging big brands to adapt. Companies from Netflix to Spotify to even Major League Baseball use Amazon’s cloud to send real-time data, stream video and much more. Before Jassy, the idea of renting computing power from another company was unheard of, and now these companies all rely on AWS for their survival. - Sanjay Malhotra, Clearbridge Mobile
