Related Expertise: Innovation Strategy and Delivery, Business Model Innovation, Product Innovation and Engineering
In most years since 2003, BCG has published an annual innovation report identifying the world’s most innovative companies, assessing the overall state of corporate innovation, and examining how top innovative companies organize, direct, and fuel their innovation engines. During this period, we have seen remarkable product innovations (for example, the first smartphones, the rise of electric vehicles, and myriad lifesaving and life-enhancing advances in health care), as well as major developments in technology and its impact on business and operating models. As this year’s report makes clear, innovation has become central to building resilience and performing through periods of uncertainty.
This year's innovation report reveals that companies that prioritize innovation and make sure that they are ready to act are widening the gap over less capable competitors.
There have been many changes in the list over time, including newcomers not previously ranked in the top 50 and companies that return after a temporary absence. But our annual rankings of the top 50 most innovative companies reveal continuity as well as dynamism: many especially innovative players earn recognition for new accomplishments year in and year out. This provides clear evidence that companies equipped with the most productive innovation engines know how to stay on top of the innovation game.
In our first innovation report, we observed that companies need to manage the innovation process in an integrated fashion “because what happens in one area often has implications elsewhere. Furthermore, globalization and recent developments in technology have amplified both the challenges and the opportunities associated with innovation.” Learn more about how these macro trends have developed and how they have altered the way companies invent and reinvent products, processes, and business models.
Companies have plenty of “will” but much less “way” when it comes to climate and sustainability innovation readiness.
More companies say innovation is a top-three CEO priority. Many are allocating the resources to prove it. But are they prepared to deliver?
In a turbulent, fast-changing world, innovation success means getting it right over and over again.
Innovators are doubling down on digital—and embracing AI, platforms, and ecosystems.
