Ren Zhengfei (任正非)

Company: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (華為技術(shù)有限公司)

Industry: Networking and telecommunications equipment

Position: President

Age: 67

Founding the company at age 44, Ren Zhengfei developed Huawei from a small telephone sales agent to one of the Fortune's Global 500 company in only 21 years. Separating itself from other Chinese private companies, Huawei is highly innovative, using 10 percent of its annual revenue on research and development, and nearly half of the company's staff are researchers and developers. Huawei is now the largest networking and telecommunications equipment supplier in China and the second-largest supplier of mobile telecommunications infrastructure equipment in the world. It serves 45 of the world's 50 largest telecom operators as well as more than one third of the world's population.