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# 100 Product Managers

2026-10-23

Ray Kroc: Making 'Consistency' the Product—How a 52-Year-Old Milkshake-Mixer Salesman Built the 40,000-Store McDonald's Machine

Ranked #37 in '100 Product Managers Who Changed the World': Ray Kroc (OVR 89.35: Business 96, Scale 93, Vision 90, Originality 88, Insight 85, Taste 80). At age 52, riddled with diabetes and arthritis, the struggling Multimixer salesman drove to San Bernardino to see why one tiny burger stand needed eight five-spindle mixers—and went on to turn a 3.5-ounce patty, a 985-page operations manual, and a real-estate flywheel into the world's most replicated physical product.

2026-10-22

Gunpei Yokoi: 'Lateral Thinking With Withered Technology'—How a Factory Repairman Built the Game Boy and Beat Every High-Spec Rival

Ranked #36 in '100 Product Managers Who Changed the World': Gunpei Yokoi (OVR 89.35: Taste 93, Originality 92, Vision 90, Insight 90, Scale 87, Business 85). Hired to maintain playing-card machines at Nintendo, he was spotted building a spring-loaded toy during work hours, went on to invent the cross D-Pad and the 118.69M-selling Game Boy, and proved that cheap, mature parts reimagined for human joy will always crush bleeding-edge specs.

2026-10-21

Satoru Iwata: 'President on My Card, Coder in My Head, Gamer at Heart'—How Nintendo's Programmer-CEO Put Grandma and Grandson on the Same Console

Ranked #35 in '100 Product Managers Who Changed the World': Satoru Iwata (OVR 89.65: Insight 93, Taste 92, Vision 90, Originality 89, Scale 88, Business 86). The first non-Yamauchi president in Nintendo's 113-year history personally rewrote code to save EarthBound and Pokémon Gold/Silver, defied the polygon wars to sell 255M NDS and Wii consoles, and cut his own salary by 50% rather than lay off a single engineer.

2026-10-19

Duan Yongping: How China's Most Elusive Product Godfather Built Subor, BBK, OPPO, and vivo—and Mentored Pinduoduo's Founder—by 'Daring to Be Late'

Ranked #34 in '100 Product Managers Who Changed the World': Duan Yongping (OVR 90.15: Business 95, Insight 93, Vision 92, Originality 87, Taste 86, Scale 86). In an industry obsessed with first-mover speed, he turned 'Benfen' (integrity), a 'Stop Doing List,' and deliberate second-mover execution into a multi-hundred-billion-dollar hardware and e-commerce dynasty.

2026-10-18

Jony Ive: How the God of Industrial Design Built the iPhone, Turning Aluminum into Strategy—and Why Unchecked Minimalism Nearly Broke the Mac

Ranked #33 in '100 Product Managers Who Changed the World': Jony Ive (OVR 90.25: Taste 99, Scale 92, Originality 92, Vision 90, Insight 88, Business 82). Steve Jobs's 'spiritual partner' rescued Apple with translucent plastic, weaponized CNC aluminum as a supply-chain moat, and now leads OpenAI's $6.5B hardware bet.