Elon and Bezos Have Just Been Named America’s Greatest Innovators And Zuckerberg Is Pissed

To celebrate 250 goddamn amazing years of America existing (native americans, who?) Forbes has launched a list of 250 (get it?) innovators currently alive. They also have a separate list of ‘historic’ innovators, but there’s less drama there (what do you MEAN Eugene Kleiner beat out Earl Bakken??!). 

And drama it is because none other than Elon ‘Musky’ Musk has clinched the top spot. But is he really more innovative than Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, George Lucas, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Phil Knight, Martine Rothblatt, Ted Turner, Vinod Khosla, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Reed Hastings, Marc Andreessen, Larry Ellison, Judy Faulkner, Jim Sinegal, Michael Bloomberg, Michael Milken, Diane Greene, Andrew Viterbi, Brian Chesky, Judy Estrin, Thomas Peterffy, Fred Moll, Henry Samueli, Bob Metcalfe, Marc Benioff, Steven Spielberg, Howard Schultz, Henry Kravis, Noubar Afeyan, Palmer Luckey, Harry Stine, Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg, George Roberts, Robert Langer, Ken Griffin, Leroy Hood, Charles Schwab, Ed Catmull, Rodney Brooks, Carl June, Rich Fairbank, Jim Clark, Phillip Sharp, Peter Thiel, Steve Wozniak, Paul Mockapetris, Dennis Slamon, Hamdi Ulukaya, Arthur Blank, Tom Mueller, H. Michael Shepard, Martin Cooper, David Shaw, Michael Dell, Leonard Kleinrock, Craig Venter, Lewis Ranieri, JB Straubel, Jeff Yass, Robert Weinberg, Dean Kamen, Marvin Caruthers, Reid Hoffman, Chuck Hull, Therese Tucker, Vlad Tenev, Fred Luddy, Paul Graham, Min Kao, George Church, Alexander Karp, Max Levchin, Feng Zhang, James Goodnight, Jan Koum, Larry Fink, David Geffen, Peggy Cherng, Jennifer Doudna, Charles Ergen, Tom Monaghan, Sandy Lerner, David Baker, George Kurtz, Leonard Adleman, Fei-Fei Li, Robert Johnson, Jack Dorsey, Stephen Schwarzman, John Mackey, Oprah Winfrey, Dario Amodei, Kevin Systrom, Eric Swanson, Madonna Ciccone, Adrian Krainer, John Morris, Lorne Michaels, James Allison, Temple Grandin, Jeffery Kelly, Ray Kurzweil, Napoleone Ferrara, Patrick Brown, Kam Ghaffarian, James Fujimoto, Carolyn Bertozzi, Brian Druker, Jeffrey Friedman, Frances Arnold, Thomas Frist Jr., Jack Dangermond, Arthur Rock, Pierre Omidyar, David Duffield, Harold Hamm, Gabe Newell, Sandy Weill, Jerry Yang, Tim Sweeney, Bill Gross, Suma Krishnan, Jay Chaudhry, Eric Fossum, David Baszucki, Daniel Gilbert, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Dan Shugar, Brad Jacobs, Eric Yuan, Walter Gilbert, Stanley Lapidus, Michael Welsh, Craig Mello, Mark Cuban, Israel Englander, Jony Ive, Craig Newmark, Eric Smidt, Tony Xu, William Kaelin, Dustin Moskovitz, Robert Pera, Tony Fadell, Brian Armstrong, John Tu, David Sun, Barry Diller, Xiaowei Zhuang, Neha Narkhede, Carl Icahn, Bill Franke, Mitchell Hashimoto, Timothy Springer, Daphne Koller, Sangeeta Bhatia, Mitch Kapor, Sheila Johnson, Yann LeCun, Andrew Ng, Zach Perret, Nina Vaca, Drew Weissman, Katalin Karikó, Jay Adelson, Len Bosack, Jeff Hawkins, Lonnie Johnson, Jed McCaleb, Andrew Weinreich, Whitney Wolfe Herd, Aman Narang, Fred Ramsdell, Thomas Südhof, Adam Foroughi, Brian Kobilka, David Walt, Baiju Bhatt, Steve Cohen, Howard Marks, Brian Acton, Yet-Ming Chiang, Peter Diamandis, Ray Ozzie, Shonda Rhimes, James Park, Ralph Lauren, Lewis Cantley, Kate Ryder, David Booth, Edwin Chen, Kevin Plank, RJ Scaringe, Sara Blakely, Alexandr Wang, Bran Ferren, Shan Sinha, Robert Lefkowitz, Jack Szostak, Katrina Lake, John Schiller, Moungi Bawendi, Billie Jean King, Shahid Khan, Yvon Chouinard, Kay Koplovitz, Hamid Moghadam, Daniela Amodei, Michael Sabel, David Steward, Evan Spiegel, Luis von Ahn, Kris Jenner, Thai Lee, Dan Bricklin, Paul Judge, John Carmack, Jerry Jones, Mira Murati, Jimmy Chen, Tyler Perry, Doris Fisher, Chad Hurley, Rick Kittles, Naval Ravikant, Hugh McColl, Cathie Wood, Jim Koch, Lynn Jurich, Shiv Rao, Chris Larsen, Donna Dubinsky, Shivani Siroya, Janice Bryant Howroyd, Peter Lynch, Limor Fried, Roberta Williams, Michael Rosbash, Caterina Fake, Calvin Klein, Lisa Lindahl, Ryan Petersen, Robert Rodriguez, Marian Croak and Taylor Swift?

Yeah, I’m not so sure.

Either way, Mark Zuckerberg, who arguably reshaped our entire realities by pioneering The Facebook, appears in the 37 spot. Pathetic.

Zuck has gone on the aggressive, launching a ‘250 Days Of Innovation’ campaign on Facebook encouraging users to write in with moments in their lives when they feel like Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg have personally added more innovation to their lives. …not that he’s bitter or anything.

So just how did Forbes come up with such a dog-ass list? Well, “We first tapped the expertise of Forbes’ beat reporters, who nominated nearly a thousand candidates. We ran those names by a panel of world-class judges—including Jim Breyer, founder of Breyer capital; tech journalist Kara Swisher; and innovation expert Rita McGrath—who ranked them based on creativity, breadth, engagement, disruption and commercial impact. Then we fed the results into the most revolutionary innovation of our time—artificial intelligence—asking both ChatGPT and Gemini to rank them according to the same criteria. Taking all this into account, Forbes editors then determined the final ranking.”

Ahhhhh, ok, well that explains it all doesn’t it. Zuck, you’ve got your hit list right there.