Henry Ford brought the car to the masses. Henry J. Kaiser fathered the HMO. J.P. Morgan saved Wall Street. Ray Kroc changed the way we eat.



But who was the most influential businessman, in terms of how business is conducted today? You decide.

To come up with our candidates, we turned to Joel Mokyr, a professor of economics and history at Northwestern University. Our only qualification: They could not be currently active in business. Sorry, Bill.



Mokyr, who is editor in chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, offered up an intriguing group. Some are well known, others not so, but the list is entirely male, heavily American and leans toward contemporary times: The candidate born before all others is Briton Matthew Boulton, the brilliant entrepreneur who was born in 1728.



Vote here.