In honor of its 85th anniversary, Bloomberg Businessweek recently published an interesting — and highly debatable — special issue titled “85 Years, 85 Ideas.” In this issue, Businessweek identified and ranked what it believes to be the most important ideas of the past past 85 years. These ideas range from the jet engine (1) to Apple (10) to DNA sequencing (25) to teenage consumers (50) to personal fitness (75) to the first widespread report using the term GDP (85).
As editor Josh Tyrangiel notes:
“This special issue chronicles the most disruptive ideas of the past 85 years, those entrepreneurial earthquakes whose tremors are still being felt. Disruption is a trendy word, but it’s used here without endorsement. To add a little tension, we’ve gone to the trouble of ranking these 85 disruptions and counting down to an overall world-changing champion. Comparing the importance of television to the impact of the Laffer Curve or Google (GOOG) to the AK-47 isn’t meant to yield scientific results. It’s meant to start some interesting arguments and remind us how dramatically business can change society.”
Click the image to see the full list.
Note: Each idea on the list is accompanied by a Businessweek story; and there are also some video clips.
