Business

William Becker 1921-2007 Paul Greene 1914-1994 They weren't the first to create no-frills lodging, but William Becker and Paul Greene reinvented the budget hotel in 1962 when they opened their first Motel 6 in Santa Barbara, Calif. Their predecessors, Best Western and Holiday Inn, wanted to sidestep the proletarian image of "motor" or "highway hotels"…

Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790 No list of greatest entrepreneurs would be complete without America's original entrepreneur, Benjamin Franklin. He was a printer and self-taught writer whose witty conversational writing style made his Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard's Almanack the most successful publications in the country. His printing operations were so successful that he franchised printing in…

Jeff Bezos b. 1964 Jeff Bezos didn't invent online shopping, but his little online-bookstore experiment has changed the way consumers purchase almost anything–books, music, clothing, jewelry and, most recently, wine. The founder and CEO of Amazon.com survived the dot-com bust of the 1990s with a handful of contemporaries such as eBay, Yahoo and Google. And…

Martha Stewart b. 1941 Author, one-time caterer, publisher and TV personality Martha Stewart did one thing better than anything else; the lifestyle maven understood the power of her brand and consolidated it in 1997 as Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Oh, and she staged a pretty good comeback in 2005 after serving five months in jail.…