By one measure, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella is tops. He beat out a tough field to be ranked as the top tech leader according to British researcher Juniper Research.
Juniper bases its new tech leadership ranking on its assessment of the leaders’ “vision, innovation and personal capital” and what it called Nadella’s implementation of “Windows-as-a-Service” as a big shift in the Microsoft’s (MSFT) traditional operating system-focused model. Nadella discussed his strategy in Fortune earlier this month.
Apple’s (AAPL) Jony Ive, who was just promoted to Chief Design Officer, was ranked second and Juniper said Apple’s smart watch will “define that category going forward.”
Interestingly,Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has taken on such minor problems as energy-efficient cars as well as space travel at his other startup SpaceX, was ranked eighth.
Here’s the entire list:
- Satya Nadella – Microsoft CEO
- Jony Ive – Apple SVP Design
- Min-Liang Tan – Razer Co-Founder & CEO
- Travis Kalanick – Uber CEO
- Reed Hastings – Netflix Co-Founder & CEO
- Jack Ma – Alibaba Founder & Chairman
- Paul Eremenko – Google Advanced Technology and Products Director
- Jeff Bezos – Amazon Founder & CEO
- Elon Musk – Tesla Chairman & CEO
- Lei Jun – Xiaomi CEO