24 Top innovators

Call them innovators, entrepreneurs, or good old-fashioned trouble-makers. These 24 disrupters have gone up against the odds as they've rattled old industries and tried to create new ones.

Nick Grouf
Nick Grouf
Spot Runner
TV advertising once required horribly expensive Madison Avenue ad agencies. That was before Nick Grouf figured out that some ads don't require a high-maintenance artiste and a three-martini lunch. Enter Spot Runner, a web-driven do-it-yourself ad-production company that allows even the most modest of businesses to whip up professional TV ads, buy airtime, and schedule them to run across the nation. This is a third at-bat for Grouf, who with partner David Waxman also founded PeoplePC and Firefly Networks. It's no surprise they have already snapped up $60 million in funding. --O.R.

Mark Gorton

Glueckman and Kantor

Hjalmar Winbladh

Craig Venter

Sunil Shaunak

Diane Greene

Nick Grouf

Caleb Chung

Stoppelman and Simmons

Glenn Kelman

Dan Olschwang

David Della Terza

Jack Memishian

Martin Eberhard

Vinod Khosla
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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.