BUSINESSPEOPLE from Denmark

Top 7

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Danish Businesspeople of all time. This list of famous Danish Businesspeople is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891 - 1958)

With an HPI of 61.02, Ole Kirk Christiansen is the most famous Danish Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 31 different languages on wikipedia.

Ole Kirk Christiansen (born Ole Kirk Kristiansen; 7 April 1891 – 11 March 1958) was a Danish carpenter. In 1932, he founded the construction toy company Lego, later known as The Lego Group. Christiansen transformed his small woodworking shop, which initially sold household products, into a manufacturer of wooden toys. By 1934, he had officially named the company Lego and established its fundamental principles. The business shifted to producing plastic bricks after the acquisition of a plastic moulding injection machine in 1947. Following his death in 1958, the company's management was handed over to his son, Godtfred.

2. Paul Elvstrøm (1928 - 2016)

With an HPI of 58.63, Paul Elvstrøm is the 2nd most famous Danish Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 36 different languages.

Paul Bert Elvstrøm (25 February 1928 – 7 December 2016) was a Danish yachtsman and the founder of Elvstrøm Sails. He won four Olympic gold medals and twenty world titles in a range of classes including Snipe, Soling, Star, Flying Dutchman, Finn, 505, and 5.5 Metre. For his achievements, Elvstrøm was chosen as "Danish Sportsman of the Century."

3. Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller (1913 - 2012)

With an HPI of 55.47, Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller is the 3rd most famous Danish Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Arnold Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller (Danish: [ˈmɛɐ̯sk məˈkʰini ˈmølɐ]; 13 July 1913 – 16 April 2012) was a Danish shipping magnate. He was a longtime figure at A.P. Moller–Maersk Group, which was founded by his father.

4. J. C. Jacobsen (1811 - 1887)

With an HPI of 52.46, J. C. Jacobsen is the 4th most famous Danish Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Jacob Christian Jacobsen (2 September 1811 – 30 April 1887), mostly known as J. C. Jacobsen, was a Danish industrialist and philanthropist best known for founding the brewery Carlsberg.

5. Jakob Nielsen (b. 1957)

With an HPI of 51.44, Jakob Nielsen is the 5th most famous Danish Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.

Jakob Nielsen (born 5 October 1957) is a Danish web usability consultant, human–computer interaction researcher, and co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group. He was named the “guru of Web page usability” in 1998 by The New York Times and the “king of usability” by Internet Magazine.

6. Anders Hejlsberg (b. 1960)

With an HPI of 49.55, Anders Hejlsberg is the 6th most famous Danish Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Anders Hejlsberg (, born 2 December 1960) is a Danish software engineer who co-designed several programming languages and development tools. He was the original author of Turbo Pascal and the chief architect of Delphi. He currently works for Microsoft as the lead architect of C# and core developer on TypeScript.

7. Janus Friis (b. 1976)

With an HPI of 34.04, Janus Friis is the 7th most famous Danish Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Janus Friis (Danish: [ˈjɛːnus ˈfʁiˀs]; born 26 June 1976) is a Danish entrepreneur best known for co-founding the file-sharing application Kazaa, and the peer-to-peer telephony application Skype. In September 2005, he and his business partner Niklas Zennström sold Skype to eBay for $2.6B. Friis has maintained ownership interest in Skype through Silver Lake Partners, which sold Skype to Microsoft for $8.5 billion (~$11.4 billion in 2023), in May 2011. Friis and Zennström also developed Joost—an interactive software application for distributing TV shows and other forms of video content over the Web. The assets of this service were sold to Adconion Media Group in November 2009. Independently, Friis founded video streaming startup Vdio in 2011. Friis and Ahti Heinla founded Starship Technologies in 2014, to develop small self-driving delivery robots.