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Agenda Setters 2002 - winners and losers
The changing face of the technology industry...

By editorial@silicon.com

Published: Sunday 28 April 2002

silicon.com's annual Agenda Setters poll is now available for all to see, at http://www.silicon.com/as2002 .

For a list of individuals setting the high-tech agenda there are plenty of people near the top of this year's list who don't seem to have much to do with tech.

This year it seems the bosses of media companies - we're calling them content kings - are able to flex their muscles more than most. Looking at this year's top ten (http://www.silicon.com/2002as/top_50_set.htm ), names like Murdoch (1), Case (2), Messier (4), Middelhoff (7) and Dyke (9) jump out.

As silicon.com editor Graham Hayday asks (http://www.silicon.com/2002as/a_content_kings_set.htm ) could it be that what people do with bandwidth, intranets, mobile phones and so on is now more important than the technology itself?

And what about some of the stars of the internet? Two years ago, in the first silicon.com Agenda Setter poll, people then closely associated with the web - and specifically e-tail - performed well, as you might expect in the middle of the bubble. Think Amazon's Jeff Bezos (6), easyGroup's Stelios (10), Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker (19) and lastminute.com's Martha Lane Fox (28).

In 2001 the e-tail field thinned, with the exception of an impressive debut by Tesco.com CEO John Browett (in at 11), eBay's Meg Whitman (16), and Bezos again (33).

Browett, Bezos and Whitman are in there again this time - with Bezos gaining the most, up to 14 - but Sonya Rabbitte argues they'll have to make some big strides to hold mindshare next time. Hasn't e-tail become, well, ordinary? (http://www.silicon.com/2002as/a_e-tailers_set.htm )

Indeed, if there are web stars this time, look no further than the husband and wife team that set up Friends Reunited. You'll have heard about the service and the fact that they've never spent a penny on marketing. That's why Steve and Julie Pankhurst together made position 20.

And here is the place to mention two of the other stand-out successes of this year, both of who owe their notoriety to the web, but in different ways.

Sergey Brin (8) is this year's highest new entry. He's the co-founder and CTO of Google, which has set new standards for internet searches.

And consider Eliot Spitzer (13). Haven't heard of him? He is the New York State Attorney-General making a reputation for himself by pursuing those investment banks alleged to have over-priced internet stock IPOs in order to win under-writer business in a different department. His use of IT to uncover any wrongdoing also won plaudits from our panellists.

But without a doubt, out of the types of people who appear in the final Agenda Setters 50, the big business CEO wins the day. With the exception of Google's Brin, they occupy the top ten. Past years which saw a fair smattering of entrepreneur, technologist and politico (the politician-cum-regulator-cum-standards guy) types feel distant.

But if there are big business leader winners, there are big business leader losers this time out, as our vendor-watching Suzanna Kerridge details (http://www.silicon.com/2002as/a_big_ceos_set.htm ). It's an undesirable club which contains Intel CEO Craig Barrett as well as that company's founder and chairman, Andy Grove, who has always featured in every previous year.

The top guys at Oracle and Sun - you know their names - barely improve on last year, but the biggest loser of all is Cisco's John Chambers. He's fallen from the bronze medal podium position last time to nowhere.

And what of the entrepreneurs, technologists and 'others'? AS2000 saw names such as Stelios Haji-Ioannou and Richard Branson, apparently keen to ride the internet wave. How things have changed. Most of the big CEOs are at established companies, although Michael Dell (5) has protected his entrepreneurial spirit more than most.

Meanwhile, the only governmental types to make a splash are ever-present European Commissioner Erkki Liikanen (17) and high-profile Presidential cyber-security chief, Richard Clarke (19). Gone are the days when the political head of China or Alan Greenspan could be said to rule the high-tech scene by wielding their wider powers.

And if 'internet' was the buzzword two years ago, last year 'mobile internet' grabbed the spotlight. Chris Gent, Jorma Ollila and Keiji Tachikawa from Vodafone, Nokia and NTT DoCoMo respectively hogged positions 2, 4 and 6. They're still in this time, further down the list, but as Tony Hallett writes (http://www.silicon.com/2002as/a_mobile_set.htm ) this is an area that has lost its lustre.

Hats off, then, to newcomers such as Carphone Warehouse's Charles Dunstone and Hans Snook (paired together at 29) and new Symbian CEO David Levin (35), who can be viewed as a direct replacement for Openwave boss Don Listwin (at 31 last year).

And what conclusions can we draw about the big picture, the wider high-tech scene? We can certainly say it remains exciting, varied - with a hundred industries within high-tech - and a man's world. Unbelievably, this year's list contains just three women - HP CEO Carly Fiorina (22) and eBay's Whitman (34) in addition to Friends Reunited's Julie Pankhurst.