Every issue of Harvard Business Review includes an interview with a world-renowned person about his or her life’s work—whether that’s directing Academy-Award winning films, designing the world’s most iconic buildings, or spearheading international campaigns in the defense of human rights. We look for the connections between each interviewee’s extraordinary experiences and the management themes we care about: innovation, leading people, competition, making tough decisions. In this slideshow, we bring you the ten people we interviewed in 2011—from Ricky Gervais and Desmond Tutu to Frank Gehry and Francis Ford Coppola.