“The past 25 years have been a period of dazzling growth for the U.S. economy, powered by innovative companies led by brilliant — and sometimes notorious — entrepreneurs and CEOs and one Federal Reserve maestro,” Ron Coddington writes for USA Today.

“These leaders — with products ranging from coffee to microprocessors — are the 25 most influential business leaders of the past 25 years, as ranked by USA TODAY’s Money section editors and reporters,” Coddington writes.

Gates tops this list, Steve Jobs is at #3, just ahead of Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, with Andy Grove of Intel at #6. Even box-assembler Michael Dell makes this one at #17.

#3: Steve Jobs, Apple: Co-founder of Apple, Jobs was ousted in a boardroom coup in 1985. But he prospered in exile, founding Pixar, the company that redefined animation. He returned to Apple in 1997, and the rest is history: iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone.

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Note: Pixar was actually founded in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of George Lucas’ Lucasfilm’s Computer Division. The group was purchased in 1986 from Lucas by Steve Jobs for US$5 million, with Jobs also provided another $5 million in capital for the company – which at the time made high end graphics design computer hardware (Pixar Image Computer). Steve Jobs served as Pixar’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer until May 2006, when the company was bought by Disney at which time Jobs took a place on the Disney board of directors and became Disney’s largest individual shareholder. But, whaddya expect, it’s USA Today — close enough for their standards, right?