oprah winfrey Oprah Winfrey Network
elisabeth murdoch
Shine Group
Elisabeth Murdoch has
clearly learned from her
pop’s acquisitive approach
to empire building. She’s built
global franchises out of such
programs as The Biggest
Loser and The Office by
gobbling up key rivals from
Stockholm to Los Angeles.
Following this spring’s
$675 million buyout of Shine
Group by Rupert Murdoch’s
News Corp., she’ll be able to
use her father’s financial
firepower to further expand
her content colossus.
david Kobia
Ushahidi
Benghazi, Libya; Sendai,
Japan; Queensland, Austra-
lia; Port-au-Prince, Haiti—
when crisis strikes,
collaborative tagging and
updating of maps is helping
to find the missing, warn of
hazards, and give rescue
workers information that
can save lives. David Kobia,
a computer engineer
who founded Ushahidi in
response to riots after
Kenya’s 2007 presidential
election, deserves much of
the credit for crisis map-
ping. “Inspiration,” he says,
“comes from the commu-
nity itself, people who use
the tools and make the most
out of poor connections.”
which song
amps up
winfrey’s
creative spirit?
“anything by
tina turner.
especially
‘nutbush city
limits.’ ”
“there’s a group of 12 oak trees on my
property in California that I call ‘my
disciples,’ ” says Oprah Winfrey. “Their
branches form a canopy over the
ground, and I sit underneath them for
inspiration.” TV’s most lauded billionaire will need more ideas than ever,
now that she’s left her talk show to
focus full time on the $285 million
Oprah Winfrey Network. The cable
channel, which launched January 1st,
aims to counter what its founder has
called “a [television] minefield that just
zaps your energy”—think catfights on
the Real Housewives series—with programs that are smart, provocative, and
inspirational. (She famously banned
the word bitch.) In Oprah Presents
Master Class, for example, celebrities
such as Diane Sawyer and Simon
Cowell impart wisdom to the camera.
Viewers have proved hungry for first-run shows, not reruns, so Winfrey, ever
the motivator, is prepping more than
25 new series—presumably while sitting among her disciples.
eric dishman
Intel
“All of health care is based
on one idea from the 1850s,”
says social scientist Eric
Dishman, Intel’s director of
health innovation. “That it
has to be delivered in a
face-to-face setting.” His
research on aging is behind
evolving systems to provide
more effective home care.
His goal is to enable 50% of
care in the U.S. to be deliv-
ered in the home by 2020.
“That’s game-changing for
quality of life, and a trillion
dollars in potential savings.”
This January, his work
inspired a spin-off com-
pany, Care Innovations GE,
a joint venture between
GE and Intel.
