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It is also no accident that the list includes only one woman, Estee Lauder, and only one industry, cosmetics, in which other women--including Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein and Mary Kay Ash--also flourished as entrepreneurs. And although this issue includes an article on an influential black entrepreneur, no people of color make our Top 20. Through most of this century, American business has been dominated by men, white men, despite more than 25 years of modern feminism and some ambitious corporate efforts to achieve racial equality. The next century will certainly be different, although I don't see meaningful change coming soon enough. Yes, our sister publication FORTUNE recently assembled a credible list of the 50 most powerful women in business. But only two women head companies included in FORTUNE's annual list of America's 500 largest firms. Meanwhile, many of America's most talented female executives, tired of trying to fit into the boys' clubs, are leaving large corporations to start their own businesses. The statistics on African Americans and other racial minorities are, if anything, even more dismal. The diversity of America's population and the entry of women into the workplace give the U.S. an important competitive advantage over other countries. But that advantage will be squandered if our largest corporations don't figure out how to benefit from these resources more fully.
Financiers, including A.P. Giannini (Bank of America) and Charles Merrill (Merrill Lynch), make our list, but some might argue that finance is underrepresented, since it was the availability of capital, as much or more than individual genius or initiative, that so often created the conditions for business success. By that measure, Drexel Burnham's Michael Milken, who raised billions for the likes of Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch and MCI Corp., should be included, notwithstanding his conviction for violating securities laws and his time spent in jail. Other financial innovators who changed the way we spend and save might also have made the list, including Dee Hock, a little-known businessman who brought the Visa credit card to prominence, and Peter Lynch, who as head of Fidelity's Magellan Fund was America's most successful money manager.