By 2010 the amount of digital information in the world is expected to double every 11 hours. If you're Jim Goodnight, all that data spells opportunity. Goodnight is CEO of SAS, the world's leading business intelligence software vendor. At the helm since the company's incorporation in 1976, Goodnight has overseen an unbroken chain of revenue growth – a feat almost unheard of in the software industry.

SAS® software was originally created by Goodnight and North Carolina State University colleagues to analyze agricultural-research data. Three decades later, it's doing things Goodnight never imagined in his days as a doctoral student in statistics.

Today, SAS is best known for sifting massive mountains of data for FORTUNE 500 companies and other organizations most people have heard of. Insurance companies use SAS to flag fraudulent claims. Retailers use SAS to find profitable places to put stores and products within those stores. More and more financial institutions use SAS to detect money laundering, as mandated by the USA PATRIOT Act and Basel II. They also use it to sniff out fraud and to score credit applications.

With its unique business model (software licensed annually) and solid reputation for innovation (24 percent of 2005 revenues reinvested in R&D), SAS is among the world's largest privately owned software companies. SAS is also renowned for its corporate culture, which has made it a fixture on "Best Places to Work" lists (including FORTUNE's.)

The company's strategy to keep employees and realize peak performance from them was showcased in the July-August 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review. Goodnight co-wrote the piece, "Managing for Creativity," with author Richard Florida, asserting that companies prosper when they make best use of their "creative capital" – that is, creative thinkers whose ideas generate valuable products and services.

"Innovation is the key to success in this business, and creativity fuels innovation," Goodnight said. "Creativity is especially important to SAS because software is a product of the mind. As such, 95 percent of my assets drive out the gate every evening. It's my job to maintain a work environment that keeps those people coming back every morning. The creativity they bring to SAS is a competitive advantage for us."

Outspoken on education reform, Goodnight sees education as critical to the success of people, organizations and nations. Goodnight himself holds a doctorate in statistics from North Carolina State University, where he was a faculty member from 1972 to 1976. His passion for learning has since led him to endow several NCSU professorships and make education the focus of SAS' philanthropy. Together with his wife, Ann, he co-founded Cary Academy in 1996, an independent college preparatory day school for students in grades six through 12, with the goal of creating a model school for integrating technology into all facets of education.

Shortly before Cary Academy opened, Goodnight launched SAS inSchool®, which develops educational software that helps schools meet the challenges of the new millennium. The software contains the framework for a new generation of teaching courseware that will further extend the use of technology as a learning tool. Year after year, SAS inSchool earns awards for educational technologies and, more importantly, the support of students, teachers and parents.

Even SAS' corporate headquarters has a distinctly academic feel, nestled on 300 wooded acres that employees call the "campus." SAS' 10,000 employees are among the industry's most loyal. In the software business, yearly turnover of 20 percent is the norm. At SAS, it's about 4 percent.

Goodnight has also been an active speaker and participant at the World Economic Forum, where business and world leaders discuss cross-boundary issues such as international standards, regulations and the global economic issues.

In 2004, Harvard Business School named Jim Goodnight one of the "20th Century's Great American Business Leaders" for his three decades of leading a business that has changed the way Americans have lived, worked and interacted in the 20th century. That same year, he was named one of America's 25 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, in honor of the publication's 25th anniversary.

Terri Kelly is President and Chief Executive Officer of W.L. Gore, a $2 billion privately held company with more than 8,000 associates.  Ms. Kelly was appointed in April 2005, after 22 years with the company in positions of increasing responsibility.
 
Perhaps best known for its consumer products like GORE-TEX® fabric and ELIXIR® guitar strings, Gore manufactures thousands of advanced technology products for the electronics, industrial, fabrics and medical markets. Gore has repeatedly been named among the 100 Best Companies to Work by Fortune, and its culture is a model for organizations seeking growth by unleashing creativity and fostering teamwork.
 
Before assuming her current role, Ms. Kelly spent more than four years as a member of the leadership team that worked with the President and Chief Executive Officer. She assisted in enterprise-wide decision making, including strategic direction and vision, investment planning, portfolio management, acquisitions and divestitures, resource planning and key enterprise initiatives.
 
Ms. Kelly began her career at Gore as a Process Engineer. She gained experience in military fabrics as a Product Specialist for the Extended Cold Weather Clothing System from 1985 to 1989 and as Business Leader with overall profit and loss responsibility for the Military Fabrics Unit from 1989 to 1998. Ms. Kelly assumed co-leadership of Fabrics, Gore’s largest division, in 1998 and was responsible for the GORE-TEX® and WINDSTOPPER® brands as well as military, fire and safety services, law enforcement, workwear and medical protective fabrics.
 
Ms. Kelly attended the University of Delaware and graduated Summa cum Laude with a BS in mechanical engineering.

Erik Peterson is senior vice president at CSIS, where he is director of the Global Strategy Institute. As director, he heads the “Seven Revolutions Initiative,” an internationally recognized effort to identify and project global trends to the year 2025. Peterson also holds the William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at CSIS. For his contributions to the Center, he received the 2006–2007 CSIS Trustees Award.

Before joining CSIS, Peterson was director of research at Kissinger Associates. Peterson serves on several boards, including that of the Center for Global Business Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He was a fellow of the World Economic Forum and served at its Global Risk Network. He currently advises the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on Transformational Diplomacy and the Center for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Globalization.

The author of several publications, he is completing another book on global strategic trends and their effects on governance structures in societies across the world. He recently contributed a chapter entitled “Scanning the More Distant Future” to For the Common Good: The Ethics of Leadership in the 21st Century (Praeger, 2006).

Peterson has spoken before numerous groups and lectured in 14 countries. He received his M.B.A. from the Wharton school, his M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and his B.A. from Colby College. He holds the Certificate of Eastern European Studies from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and the Certificate in International Legal Studies from The Hague Academy of International Law in the Netherlands.

Chuck Underwood is the founder and president of The Generational Imperative, Inc., or TGI, a research-driven generational business consultancy.

Having studied and researched the generational values and beliefs that guide the decision-making of Americans for two decades, he is a leading authority on generational dynamics in both the marketplace and workplace.

Chuck began his generational research in the late 1980s, long before the discipline started to come to the widespread attention of American business.

In 1999, in order to conduct generationally-strategized research studies for his clients and his own company, he underwent formal training in qualitative research methodology and focus-group moderating, in Chicago. His research clients now include such giants as Procter & Gamble, Eli Lilly, Coca Cola, Western-Southern Insurance, Group Voyagers Travel, and others. And he conducts his own proprietary generational research to guide his work with TGI’s clients.

The Ohio University School of Business grad had spent his earlier career in the mass media of radio and television, first as an award-winning broadcast journalist and national sports play-by-play announcer, and then as a creator and producer of original programming. He has hosted and produced shows that have aired nationally and internationally. His productions have attracted major national advertisers such as Wendy’s, Coca Cola, United Healthcare, Converse, Adidas, Meijer Stores, Dr. Pepper, Fila, 1-800-COLLECT, and others. His television production subsidiary, CUP, Inc., has received a national-distribution commitment to create and produce a documentary series about America’s Generations and is currently seeking a major corporate sponsor for this high-profile television project.

Kris Manos leads Herman Miller’s office environments business in North America with over $1.4 billion in annual sales. She designs the customer experience through sales, marketing, distribution and products, and has frontline responsibility for managing and extending the brand worldwide. She is accountable for Herman Miller’s owned dealer network and the Geiger subsidiary. Kris joined Herman Miller in 2002 as the Senior Vice President of Marketing.

Before coming to Herman Miller, Kris worked both in the office furniture industry and the diesel engine business, with experience spanning operations, product development, marketing, finance and business development.

She earned a Masters in management from Yale University and an undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard University.

Kris serves on the boards of Holland Hospital and Select Comfort Corporation.