A couple of weeks ago I linked to stories about great women entrepreneurs. Today we’ll look at the guys.

A contributor at Fortune created a list of what he considers the 12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time.

They are Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Fred Smith, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Howard Schultz, Mark Zukerberg, John Mackey, Herb Kelleher, Narayana Murthy, Sam Walton, Muhammad Yunus

These founders created and then nurtured healthy, sustainable organizations that now have a combined market value of more than $1.7 trillion. They directly employ more than 3 million people…

Each of their companies sits at the nucleus of a thriving ecosystem that has cultivated and nurtured dozens if not hundreds of other enterprises.

There is a short profile of each at the link; considering it’s a kind of holiday weekend that’s enough reading.

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

By Wes Ball, author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success. Read all of Wes’ posts here­.

Sam Walton made no bones about it.  He was not going to lose control of Wal-Mart to the stock market.  Even after they started selling stock over the counter, top management at Wal-Mart was able to maintain control over the strategic direction of the company right up to Sam’s death in 1992.

Sam was a leader.  He had a clear vision that he would not compromise.  He took risks, built a support team to “manage” the company, empowered and nurtured employees, shared profits, and built a company that is still the envy of most retailers.  It also became the Alpha in discount retailing due to that leadership.

Compare that with the life of most CEOs today: shareholders and stock analysts really run their companies, because stock price is the measurement of their success.  Their bonuses are based upon it, and their future employment is based upon it.

CEOs who have to answer to the whims of the stock market cannot be leaders, because they have already defined themselves as followers.

Is it possible for a CEO of a publicly-owned company to maintain leadership?

Certainly, but it takes an extremely charismatic, visionary, focused individual who is willing and capable of bucking stock analyst and shareholder pressure for short-term profit results and instead keep the company focused upon long-term success.

All of the Alpha companies I researched for my book, The Alpha Factor, had such leadership in their early formative years.  What killed most of those companies later on was the compromise of allowing stockholders and stock analysts (or other outsiders) to drive the strategic management of the company.

How would you protect your company from this if you had to generate significant financing?

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: jakoblyng  CC license