William Kamkwamba

William Kamkwamba, from Malawi, is a born inventor. When he was 14, he built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap, working from rough plans he found in a library book called Using Energy and modifying them to fit his needs. The windmill he built powers four lights and two radios in his family home.

Zaha Hadid

Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid (1950–2016) left an indelible mark on the architectural landscape. Futuristic designs by the late architect remain some of the most celebrated structures in the world to this day. Hadid’s extraordinary accomplishments were all the more remarkable considering she was working in an industry largely dominated by men.

Reuben Reuel

When Reuben Reuel first started his brand in 2012, he never could have imagined seeing Beyoncé wearing his clothing a little over a year later. Reuben is the owner and designer of Demestik, a clothing line characterized by bold African prints, architectural patterns, and soft, supple cotton fabric. During the pandemic, Demestik began selling statement-making face masks in a variety of bold and vibrant Ankara fabrics.

Shigetaka Kurita

When Shigetaka Kurita created the first emoji in 1999, he had to work within a grid measuring 12 by 12 pixels. That's a total of 144 dots, or 18 bytes of data, meaning that the Japanese designer's complete set of 176 pictograms took up just over 3 kilobytes. The word emoji combines the Japanese words for picture (e pronounced “eh”) and letters (moji pronounced “moh-jee”).

Heston Blumenthal

Chef Heston Blumenthal has been described as a culinary alchemist for his innovative style of cuisine. Over the past two decades, Blumenthal has developed hundreds of new cooking techniques, and the great majority of these have found their way onto the menus of other ambitious restaurants. He gave the world triple-cooked chips.

Richard Turere

Richard Turere hails from the pastoral Maasai community in Kenya. Because Richard’s family lives on the periphery of the unfenced Nairobi National Park, they often experienced lion attacks on their livestock, leading to devastating losses of livestock that they depend on for survival. Richard applied his creative thinking skills and came up with a novel solution.

Peter Dahmen

Peter Dahmen, born in 1967, studied Communication Design at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund, Germany. Since his studies, he passionately creates three-dimensional folding objects out of paper and cardboard. For a long time, only a few people had seen his work, but that changed dramatically when he published a short film of his paper sculptures in January 2010.

Nadia Hussain

Nadiya Hussain rose to fame after winning the sixth series of The Great British Bake Off. Fast forward, and Nadiya is now a celebrity baker and influencer, who is never far away from our TV sets. She has an obsession with fish fingers, claiming to have once eaten 18 in a row and this led to one of her most creative dishes - fish finger lasagne.