innovationterms

Innovation Leaders

The people behind the breakthroughs — historic figures and the leaders shaping innovation now. Each profile looks past the biography to the method: how they innovate, what guides them, and what made them good at it.

Damian Józefiak

Co-founding Central Europe's largest insect protein plant and pioneering industrial-scale black soldier fly farming in Poland

ScienceBiotechnologyFood & BeverageAgriculture

Galileo Galilei

1564–1642

Founding observational astronomy and the experimental method

SciencePhysicsHistoric

Grace Hopper

1906–1992

Pioneering the compiler and machine-independent programming languages

TechnologySoftwareEngineeringHistoric

Justyna Andrysiak

Leading the product and technology pipeline that produced the EU's first authorised bacteriophage-based animal feed additive

ScienceBiotechnologyPharmaceuticalsAgriculture

Lê Anh Sơn

Building Vietnam's first ISO-certified industrial robot and deploying it inside a Samsung factory — then exporting it to South Korea

EngineeringArtificial IntelligenceManufacturingRobotics

Ngô Tuấn Anh

b. 1981

Founding SafeGate's router-plus-cloud security platform and chairing ViSecurity, Vietnam's national cybersecurity coordination network

TechnologySoftwareEngineeringCybersecurity

Nguyễn Tử Quảng

b. 1975

Founding Bkav in 1995, cracking iPhone Face ID before any team on earth, and building Vietnam's first independently designed high-end smartphone

TechnologySoftwareArtificial IntelligenceCybersecurity

Przemysław Żelazowski

b. 1978

Founding SatAgro and making satellite-based precision agriculture accessible to farms of any size

TechnologyScienceAgriculture

Stefan Palzer

b. 1971

Leading R&D and technology across the world's largest food and beverage company

ScienceResearch & DevelopmentFood & Beverage

Steve Jobs

1955–2011

Co-founding Apple and reinventing personal computing, music, and phones

TechnologyDesignHistoric

Uğur Şahin & Özlem Türeci

b. 1965 / b. 1967

Co-founding BioNTech and developing the first approved mRNA COVID-19 vaccine

ScienceBiotechnologyHealthcare