BIOTECH
Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey
Co-founders // 23andMe

GENE GENIES Want to compare your ancestry with that of your spouse? Learn if you are really of Italian descent? Or more important, find out your risk of developing certain diseases? 23andMe has the answers. Co-founded by Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, this Silicon Valley startup is among the first of a handful of companies offering at-home genetic testing. Spit into a test tube, mail it to their lab, and in a few weeks you'll have online access to your very own genome via a secure website (cost: $999 plus shipping). Backed by investments from Genentech, Google—Wojcicki's husband is Google co-founder Sergey Brin—and a few private individuals, 23andMe helps customers learn their genetic predispositions for a wide range of health problems, from Type 2 diabetes to restless legs syndrome, and thus equip themselves to better deal with or even potentially prevent the onset of an illness. More radical is 23andMe's goal of facilitating what might be called grassroots research projects: studies in which people with a specific illness offer their samples en masse as a way to determine genetic links. The Parkinson's Institute is already collaborating with 23andMe on a study, and discussions are under way with advocacy groups for sufferers of autism—a constituency that has been vocal about the slow pace of research. —Amy Wallace

ART
Yue Minjun
Artist

MARKET MOVER Before the prices for Chinese art exploded, Yue Minjun was a relatively obscure painter. But in October, his Massacre of Chios sold at auction for $4.1 million at Sotheby's Hong Kong, and a week later, at a Sotheby's auction in London, his Execution fetched $5.9 million, a record for a Chinese contemporary work. Execution is a response to the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, in the manner of Édouard Manet's 19th-century masterpiece The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. Since the auctions, prices for Yue's previous work and that of his peers have jumped, helping make Chinese art a must-have for many big-name collectors in the business world, including ex-investment banker Kent Logan, ad magnate Charles Saatchi, and real estate heiress Pearl Lam. —Callen Bair

PHILANTHROPY
Jacqueline Novogratz
C.E.O. // Acumen Fund

DOING WELL BY DOING BETTER After seven years at the Rockefeller Foundation, Jacqueline Novogratz started the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture capital firm that applies business metrics to philanthropy. Acumen backs companies that aim for a "double bottom line" of financial returns and social impact. So far, Acumen has invested $31 million in 21 businesses in Africa, India, and Pakistan. One recent success: A to Z Textile Mills, a Tanzanian company that makes insecticide-treated mosquito nets to protect people against malaria. Acumen invested $325,000—which it got back—to help the company set up a factory that employs 5,000 people and produces 8 million bed nets annually. Novogratz is now raising $100 million and will be assisted in reaching that goal by one of her better-known donors, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. —Robert Levine

RETAIL
Lee Scott
C.E.O. // Wal-Mart

SEQUEL TO THE WALTONS Under Lee Scott, the 46-year-old company is making some radical moves. In the wake of criticism of its employee health-care benefits, Wal-Mart now has a program with the potential to transform the $2 trillion U.S. health-care market. This year, the company will begin opening in-store health clinics, which will offer low-priced, à la carte services ranging from measles vaccinations to cholesterol screening. The retail giant plans to open 400 such clin­ics over the next three years. With some 7,000 stores and nearly $350 billion in annual revenue, Wal-Mart is also making commitments to help the environment. The firm set out to sell 100 million energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs in 2007, a goal it accomplished in October, three months early. And the chain is now the biggest seller of organic milk and largest buyer of organic cotton in the world. —Blaise Zerega

TECH
Max Levchin
C.E.O. // Slide.com

BRAIN FROM UKRAINE While much of the business world focuses on Facebook, with its $15 billion valuation and 67 million users, Levchin, a Ukranian immigrant, is quietly building something much bigger. His three-year-old software company, Slide.com, creates widgets—applications like FunWall and Top Friends, which people use to personalize their MySpace pages and Facebook profiles. Just as nearly everyone with a PC uses Microsoft's programs, Slide's software is on track to become the industry standard for social networking. The company currently has about 170 million ­users, but more are likely to come as Facebook, MySpace, and similar overseas sites grow (70 percent of Slide's users are outside the United States). Advertisers and content providers like Levchin's model because the software tracks users' preferences—which videos they watch, what photos they share, who their friends are, and more—much in the way that Google records people's search habits. Slide's information is already being used to tailor marketing campaigns to specific users. Just 32, Levchin is on his sixth startup; at 22, he co-founded PayPal, which later sold for more than $1.5 billion. Recently, T. Rowe Price and Fidelity joined marquee Silicon Valley venture firms investing in Slide. —Michael S. Malone