Chairman and CEO, Lucent Technologies (last year No. 17) AGE 52 ADDRESS 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, N.J. BIO Until 1996,
AT&T's research-and-development labs were renowned for two
things: being among the best in the world at dreaming up new
technologies, and being slow as molasses in January when it came
to getting those ideas into products on the market. McGinn has
changed the latter while maintaining his company's (spun off from
AT&T and renamed Lucent) research edge. This smart,
quick-thinking former history major has turned Lucent into a
telecommunications heavyweight and one of the biggest success
stories of the 1990s. 1998 POWER PLAY Lucent's market cap
surpassed AT&T's this year--not bad for a two-year-old--while its
stock doubled. As the world waits to see what the information
pipeline of the future will look like, Lucent is poised to
provide the infrastructure, no matter how data and voice
information get into homes and businesses. Its movement into
data-networking territory has put it head to head with another
industry prodigy, Cisco Systems. PLACE YOUR BETS It is unclear
how the battle between Cisco and Lucent will shake out, but one
thing is lucid: Lucent's track record of providing switching
equipment to the regional Bell phone companies is an edge. This
year's buying spree--Lucent acquired more than half a dozen
technology-infrastructure companies--has only just begun. Analysts
expect the purchase of a large networking company in the next few
months and continued good returns.
