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Boston Consulting group is a global consulting firm working together with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges. Since 2003, the company has annually published a ranking of the most innovative companies. This ranking, which goes under the heading Most Innovative Companies Report, makes out the world’s most innovative companies through evaluating the overall state of corporate innovation and analysing how the most innovative among companies organise and run their innovative processes.

The ranking is based mainly on a survey of more than 1,000 global innovation executives who were polled in December 2022 and January 2023. In this survey, the company’s performance was assessed according to four metrics and an average of normalised scores were taken to calculate its overall ranking. The metrics include:

• Global Mindshare, comprising the votes from all global innovation executives;
• Industry Peer View including the votes received from executives in a company’s own industry;
• Industry Disruption comprising the Diversity Index (Herfindahl-Hirschman) of votes across industries;
• Value Creation, consisting of total shareholder return, including share buybacks, over the three-year period from January 1, 2020, through December 31, 2022.



This year’s report has shown clearly that it is mainly innovation which helped companies steer trough the turbulent waters of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. While during the crisis in 2009 only 58% of companies were inclined to increase spending on innovation and almost 15% were planning to cut innovation investment altogether, now 79% rank it among their top three priorities and 66% intend to even increase it. It is small wonder therefore that the most innovative companies also produced greater revenue and built up resilience and an advantage over their competitors through innovation. The survey also highlighted that using tools such as M&A, portfolio planning, and AI, gives companies the edge over other companies. Several companies even planned to direct one-third of spending toward developing breakthrough innovations. Such companies were found to generally use a wide range of strategic tools, employ innovative technologies and acquire innovative and creative employees. They also value cross-border cooperations and regularly assess the performance of their products.

The first ten spots in this year’s ranking are mainly occupied by companies specialising in electronical or electrical engineering. Positions one to three are held by Apple, Tesla and Amazon. Tesla is one of the companies constantly churning out new ideas. In 2023, for example, the company developed a Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology for vehicles, designed a Smart Summon Feature for cars and greatly improved its rapid-charge infrastructure. Amazon, meanwhile, is constantly growing its Renewables portfolio around the globe, currently investing into the construction of a solar farm in Brazil.

Places four to ten are claimed by companies such as Alphabet (4^th), Microsoft (5^th), Moderna (6^th), Samsung (7^th), Huawei (8^th), BYD (9^th) and Siemens (10^th). The companies claiming positions 7 to 10 all have large stakes in renewables. Samsung, for example, is investing heavily into solar and wind power as well as energy storage around the globe. The Chinese company BYD has erected large-scale battery storage systems in many countries. A large battery storage system, Cube Pro liquid-cooled energy storage system, for example, will be installed in Las Vegas before year’s end. Siemens, on the other hand, is directing its efforts towards tackling the problem of utilising decommissioned wind blades. With its RecyclableBlade, it has found an easy and sustainable solution where the blades are recycled and can be used in other industries.



The process is intended for commercial use both offshore and onshore.

It is interesting to note that the first nine spots in the ranking are entirely occupied by American or Asian (China, South Korea) companies, with only one European company, Siemens, managing to secure a spot among the top ten.

By the Editorial Board