As president and CEO, Jim Thornton, 40, is helping Provo Craft and Novelty Inc. transition from its history as a traditional “stickers and paper” craft company to an innovator in the consumer-electronics industry. With its lauded personal electronic cutting system Cricut — and a handful of other creativity-oriented consumer-electronics products in the works — Provo Craft boasts more than $300 million in revenue annually. In 2007, Thornton won an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Utah region. He credits his success to his ability to “find, recruit, hire and retain great talent.”

“It’s just not good enough in today’s environment to hire good leaders; you have to hire great leaders. And what separates a good leader from a great leader is really two things. First of all, a great leader makes decisions that other people can’t or won’t make. So you want to surround yourself with people who can make good decisions, who have the aptitude and, frankly, the guts to do it.

The second piece of what makes a great leader, in my opinion, is that a great leader surrounds him or herself with very talented people, more talented than he or she is quite frankly, and gives them all the credit. What I’ve learned as we had some bumpy periods early on in my tenure at Provo Craft is when you give other people the credit for the success than when the failure comes, they are willing to share that with you as well. And we’ve maintained just a very cohesive, almost collegial feel among our leadership group at Provo Craft because we know good times or bad, we are going to stand next to each other, and we’re going to keep moving forward.”