1. Icon: Elon Musk

Elon Musk, entrepreneur, investor, engineer and a great inspirator. Who doesn't know him?

These are just a couple of things we all probably know. The fact that he is a great entrepreneur, is not the reason why he should be, at least somewhere, on list of influential people.

It is also not his great vision. There are a lot of people with a great vision, but their vision is or too small or they do not do anything about it. Elon wants to save humanity (yes there are more visionaries trying to do that as well). This to me is a great deal. The fact that does not wait for society or a government to do something about it, makes him an icon to me. He makes sure he can build his own vision.

He wants to achieve this vision, trying to make us humans immortal, by reaching the interstellar level. Some of the great minds have suggested that to be able to survive an extinction, overpopulation, famine, self-destruction or just being hit by a rock from the sky, we must be able to leave earth.

Elon is doing this. In short he created some companies (PayPal), created enough cashflow so he could start SpaceX.