Entrepreneurs are our heroes. The Red Herring believes that innovation nearly always happens outside large organizations. When big companies do create something new, like Java or the original Macintosh, it is almost always the work of some piratical band at odds with the larger institution. Continual innovation is the engine of the technology industry, the mechanism by which, year after year, digital technology offers the world cheaper and faster ways to do the work it already does and the means to do things it has not done before.

Entrepreneurs are the most important element in developing these technologies and bringing them to market. We envy entrepreneurs their originality, admire them for the risks they take, and honor them for their rewards. Entrepreneurs like Dave Packard, Bill Shockley, Seymour Cray, John Warnock, Steve Jobs, and Jim Clark created the industry we write about. We owe them our jobs.

With pardonable temerity, we have chosen the 20 men and women who we think are today's most significant entrepreneurs. To be selected, an entrepreneur had to have a history of starting new companies and be working on new ventures that stand some chance of success. The new ventures had to offer potentially transformational technologies. In short, the top entrepreneurs of 1997 are the businesspeople we think the mainstream press will be writing about in 1998.

Some of them are the people you would expect. Gordon Campbell is here; so is Bill Gross. There is, predictably, a preponderance of Internet entrepreneurs. We didn't forget Kim Polese and Halsey Minor.

But some of our choices, we hope, will surprise and please you. We chose Alejandro Zaffaroni, a 72-year-old Uruguayan biotech entrepreneur, because every one of his seven companies has been wildly lucrative and innovative, and because he founded Affymetrix, a designer of gene chips used in the diagnosis of genetic disorders. We have chosen little-known names like InfoSpace's Naveen Jain (who thinks he's smarter than his old boss, Bill Gates); Ned Lerner (whose Internet gaming company, Multitude, graced our cover in June); and Lowell Turriff (who founded Cypress Semiconductor and, more recently, Aptos Semiconductor, after a lifetime in middle management). And in recognition of their past achievements and future promise, we have raised Jerry Kaplan and Mark Hoffman from the dead.

Some of our choices are perhaps provocative. Against our own principles, we chose Xerox PARC as an (inanimate) entrepreneur for its unsurpassed history of innovation and be cause, with Xerox New Ventures, Xerox has finally learned to let technologies find their own markets. We chose Rupert Murdoch because, whether we like him or not, he will be as oppressive a presence in new media and satellite broadcasting as he is in print journalism, television, and film. And in a special bonus profile, we elected Ray Dolby the antientrepreneur: for 30 years he has run Dolby Labs as a solid technology company. He has never taken outside investment nor considered taking his company public. He shuns publicity. We wrote about him anyway.

The 20 entrepreneurs appear in alphabetical order. It was hard enough choosing them; we couldn't bear to rank them. Enjoy.

SURFING THE AMAZON Online bookseller Jeff Bezos prepares for turbulence.

JACK OF ALL TRADES Gordon Campbell's Techfarm grows startups of all shapes and sizes.

TOY STORY Wink's Brian Dougherty got his start in a warehouse of Barbie dolls.

STREAM WEAVER Progressive Networks' Rob Glaser sees big things ahead for real-time Internet multimedia.

SETH SELLS Seth Goldstein and SiteSpecific intend to reinvent Web advertising.

IDEA FACTORY Bill Gross had more notions than he knew what to do with, so he founded his own incubator.

SOLDIER OF FORTUNE Sybase cofounder Mark Hoffman left a $1 billion giant for a $0 startup.

SMARTER THAN BILL Naveen Jain on Naveen Jain.

INDUSTRIAL PYROMANIAC Rising from the ashes of Go, Jerry Kaplan is lighting a fire under Web commerce.

GRATEFUL NED For Ned Lerner, founding companies hasn't always been fun and games.

GOLD MINOR CNet CEO Halsey Minor staked an early claim on new media. And he's not leaving until it pans out.

LORD OF THE SKIES Sir Keith Rupert Murdoch extends his reach into new media.

CREATIVE MIND Organic Online's Jonathan Nelson focuses on the consumer experience.

THE ENVELOPE, POLESE No one knows Java like Kim Polese, but how long can Marimba command the spotlight?

OUT OF THE BOX Spry founder David Pool gets pushy with DataChannel.

A TALE OF TWO HENRYS Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas are high-speed networking's dynamic duo.

THE TAO OF CHIPS Semiconductor sage Lowell Turriff reflects on the Silicon Path.

A WALK IN THE PARC For Xerox PARC, spinning off innovative technology ventures is second nature.

STARTUP JUNKIE Magdalena Yesil helps small companies get a quick fix.

MEDICINE MIDAS At 72, Alejandro Zaffaroni continues to shepherd biotechnology's greatest talents.

AGAINST THE GRAIN The Herring honors Ray Dolby as the antientrepreneur.