There aren’t many South Africans around that could stand a chance of winning this award. As a result, you’ve probably already guessed who this one is.

That’s right, it’s Elon Musk. The Pretoria-born CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has taken the business world’s most coveted accolade. In Fortune’s cover story about him, author Chris Anderson compares Musk with the late Apple founder Steve Jobs, in part for his persuasiveness.

Jobs’ reputation for ‘reality distortion’ is well-documented. In his own way, Musk is equally persuasive, trusting his own internal logic and instincts in the face of intense pushback.

Speaking about the challenges he’s faced at Tesla in developing door handles that would extend as the driver approached and automatically retract to minimize air resistance, Musk said:

There were numerous conversations where I had pushback from the engineers. And it’s not like they were saying, ‘Oh, this is a challenge.’ More like, ‘This is the stupidest thing ever.’ But we did it in the end, and yes, I think it’s cool – one of the car’s signature features.

In picking Musk and other finalists, Fortune magazine said it weighed a number of factors. They considered financial results like year-over-year growth in profit and revenue, stock performance and the companies’ market values.

1. Elon Musk – CEO Tesla, SpaceX; Chairman
2. The Activist Investor
3. “Pony” Ma Huateng – Co-founder and CEO, Tencent
4. Angela Ahrendts – CEO, Burberry
5. Jeff Bewkes – CEO, Time Warner; Reed Hastings – CEO, Netflix
6. Jeff Bezos – Founder and CEO, Amazon
7. Akio Toyoda – CEO, Toyota
8. Larry Page – Co-founder and CEO, Google
9. Warren Buffett – Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
10. Marissa Mayer – CEO, Yahoo

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[Source : Wall Street Journal]