Technology
Ranked: The Most Innovative Companies in 2021
Ranked: the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2021
This year has been rife with pandemic-induced changes that have shifted corporate priorities—and yet, innovation has remained a top concern among corporations worldwide.
Using data from the annual ranking done by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) using a poll of 1,600 global innovation professionals, this graphic ranks the top 50 most innovative companies in 2021.
We’ll dig into a few of the leading companies, along with their innovative practices, below.
Most Innovative Companies: A Breakdown of the Leaderboard
To create the top 50 innovative company ranking, BCG uses four variables:
- Global “Mindshare”: The number of votes from all innovation executives.
- Industry Peer Review: The number of votes from executives in a company’s industry.
- Industry Disruption: A diversity index to measure votes across industries.
- Value Creation: Total share return.
For the second year in a row, Apple claims the top spot on this list. Here’s a look at the full ranking for 2021:
Company | Industry | HQ | Change from 2020 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Apple | Technology | 🇺🇸 U.S. | -- |
2 | Alphabet | Technology | 🇺🇸 U.S. | -- |
3 | Amazon | Consumer Goods | 🇺🇸 U.S. | -- |
4 | Microsoft | Technology | 🇺🇸 U.S. | -- |
5 | Tesla | Transport & Energy | 🇺🇸 U.S. | +6 |
6 | Samsung | Technology | 🇰🇷 South Korea | -1 |
7 | IBM | Technology | 🇺🇸 U.S. | +1 |
8 | Huawei | Technology | 🇨🇳 China | -2 |
9 | Sony | Consumer Goods | 🇯🇵 Japan | -- |
10 | Pfizer | Healthcare | 🇺🇸 U.S. | Return |
11 | Siemens | Technology | 🇩🇪 Germany | +10 |
12 | LG Electronics | Consumer Goods | 🇰🇷 South Korea | +6 |
13 | Technology | 🇺🇸 U.S. | -3 | |
14 | Alibaba | Consumer Goods | 🇨🇳 China | -7 |
15 | Oracle | Technology | 🇺🇸 U.S. | +10 |
16 | Dell | Technology | 🇺🇸 U.S. | +4 |
17 | Cisco Systems | Technology | 🇺🇸 U.S. | -5 |
18 | Target | Consumer Goods | 🇺🇸 U.S. | +4 |
19 | HP Inc. | Technology | 🇺🇸 U.S. | -4 |
20 | Johnson & Johnson | Healthcare | 🇺🇸 U.S. | +6 |
21 | Toyota | Transport & Energy | 🇯🇵 Japan | +20 |
22 | Salesforce | Technology | 🇺🇸 U.S. | +13 |
23 | Walmart | Consumer Goods | 🇺🇸 U.S. | -10 |
24 | Nike | Consumer Goods | 🇺🇸 U.S. | -8 |
25 | Lenovo | Technology | 🇭🇰 Hong Kong SAR | Return |
26 | Tencent | Consumer Goods | 🇨🇳 China | -12 |
27 | Procter & Gamble | Consumer Goods | 🇺🇸 U.S. | +12 |
28 | Coca-Cola | Consumer Goods | 🇺🇸 U.S. | +20 |
29 | Abbott Labs | Healthcare | 🇺🇸 U.S. | New |
30 | Bosch | Transport & Energy | 🇩🇪 Germany | +3 |
31 | Xiaomi | Technology | 🇨🇳 China | -7 |
32 | Ikea | Consumer Goods | 🇳🇱 Netherlands | Return |
33 | Fast Retailing | Consumer Goods | 🇯🇵 Japan | Return |
34 | Adidas | Consumer Goods | 🇩🇪 Germany | Return |
35 | Merck & Co. | Healthcare | 🇺🇸 U.S. | Return |
36 | Novartis | Healthcare | 🇨🇭 Switzerland | +11 |
37 | Ebay | Consumer Goods | 🇺🇸 U.S. | Return |
38 | PepsiCo | Consumer Goods | 🇺🇸 U.S. | Return |
39 | Hyundai | Transport & Energy | 🇰🇷 South Korea | Return |
40 | SAP | Technology | 🇩🇪 Germany | -13 |
41 | Inditex | Consumer Goods | 🇪🇸 Spain | Return |
42 | Moderna | Healthcare | 🇺🇸 U.S. | New |
43 | Philips | Healthcare | 🇳🇱 Netherlands | -20 |
44 | Disney | Media & Telecomms | 🇺🇸 U.S. | Return |
45 | Mitsubishi | Transport & Energy | 🇯🇵 Japan | New |
46 | Comcast | Media & Telecomms | 🇺🇸 U.S. | New |
47 | GE | Transport & Energy | 🇺🇸 U.S. | Return |
48 | Roche | Healthcare | 🇨🇭 Switzerland | Return |
49 | AstraZeneca | Healthcare | 🇬🇧 UK | New |
50 | Bayer | Healthcare | 🇩🇪 Germany | -12 |
One company worth touching on is Pfizer, a returnee from previous years that ranked 10th in this year’s ranking. It’s no surprise that Pfizer made the list, considering its instrumental role in the fight against COVID-19. In partnership with BioNTech, Pfizer produced a COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year. This is impressive considering that, historically, vaccine development could take up to a decade to complete.
Pfizer is just one of four COVID-19 vaccine producers to appear on the list this year—Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca also made the cut.
Meanwhile, in a completely different industry, Toyota snagged the 21st spot on this year’s list, up 20 places compared to the rankings in the previous year. This massive jump can be signified by the company’s recent $400 million investment into a company set to build flying electric cars.
While we often think of R&D and innovation as being synonymous, the former is just one innovation technique that’s helped companies earn a spot on the list. Other companies have innovated in different ways, like streamlining processes to increase efficiency.
For instance, in 2021, Coca-Cola performed an analysis of their beverage portfolio and ended up cutting their brand list in half, from 400 to 200 global brands. This ability to pare down and pivot could be a reason behind its 20 rank increase from 2020.
Innovation Creates Value
As this year’s ranking indicates, innovation comes in many forms. But, while there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, there is one fairly consistent innovation trend—the link between innovation and value.
In fact, according to historical data from BCG, the correlation between value and innovation has grown even stronger over the last two decades.
For example, in 2020, a portfolio that was theoretically invested in BCG’s most innovative companies would have performed 17% better than the MSCI World Index—which wasn’t the case back in 2005.
And yet, despite innovation’s value, many companies can’t reap the benefits that innovation offers because they aren’t ready to scale their innovative practices.
The Innovation Readiness Gap
BCG uses several metrics to gauge a company’s “innovation readiness,” such as the strength of its talent and culture, its organization ecosystems, and its ability to track performance.
According to BCG’s analysis, only 20% of companies surveyed were ready to scale on innovation.
What’s holding companies back from reaching their innovation potential? The most significant gap seems to be in what BCG calls innovation practices—things like project management or the ability to execute an idea that’s both efficient and consistent with an overarching strategy.
To overcome this obstacle, BCG says companies need to foster a “one-team mentality” to increase interdepartmental collaboration and align team incentives, so everyone is working towards the same goal.
Technology
The World’s Biggest Cloud Computing Service Providers
Cloud computing service providers generated $270 billion in revenues last year, concentrated among a few giants.
The World’s Biggest Cloud Computing Service Providers
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
Today, the three largest cloud computing service providers command 66% of the global market.
Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have generated billions in revenues through their cloud infrastructure that provide the computing power companies need to store data. What’s more, most AI models are run on the cloud, creating a surge in computing demand for cloud providers.
The above graphic shows the largest cloud providers globally, based on data from Synergy Research Group.
Breaking Down the Cloud Market
Here are the world’s top cloud computing service providers based on enterprise revenues as of the fourth quarter of 2023:
Provider | Country | Market Share Q4 2023 |
---|---|---|
Amazon Web Services | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 31% |
Microsoft Azure | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 24% |
Google Cloud | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 11% |
Alibaba Cloud | 🇨🇳 China | 4% |
Salesforce | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 3% |
IBM Cloud | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 2% |
Oracle | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 2% |
Tencent Cloud | 🇨🇳 China | 2% |
Other | 🌐 Other | 21% |
With 31% of the global market share, Amazon’s cloud division posted $24.2 billion in revenues over the quarter.
AWS is a major cash engine for the company, but growth slowed over 2023 as enterprises and startups cut back on tech spending. Annual sales growth compared to the same quarter last year grew by 13%—far below competitors Microsoft and Google, whose cloud divisions grew by 30% and 26%, respectively.
As we can see, U.S. firms make up the lion’s share of the market, while China’s Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud together comprise 5% of the global share.
The AI Boom and the Cloud
Given that a significant chunk of AI models are run on the cloud, the industry may be positioned to see greater demand as momentum accelerates.
In fact, newer AI systems are as much as 10 to 100 times larger than older models. In line with this, major cloud providers are seeing high demand for cloud services to allow companies across financial to manufacturing sectors to run large language models on their platforms.
Today, 98% of companies globally rely on the cloud for at least one part of their business applications, which may present a market opportunity for the industry as advancements in AI continue to grow.
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