15 Lessons Of Innovation For 2016
What we learned this
year while building our list of the best and brightest.
When we set out to build
this year’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, we didn’t begin with
macroeconomic parameters. Instead our reporting team dug into details on
thousands of companies around the globe. Our axiom has always been that whatever
challenges may be buffeting business—political uncertainty, market instability,
international unrest—there are always pockets of extraordinary achievement.
That is what we were looking to uncover.
And we were inspired by what we found. Our top 50 companies
includes only six repeats from a year ago, underscoring the dynamism of the
innovation landscape. Our top 10 lists spotlight leaders in more than 20
different sectors, from architecture to virtual reality, China to India. We
partnered for the first time with data-analysis outfit Quid, whose
machine-intelligence engine helped us identify a broader pool of candidates;
that breadth reinforced our conviction that a new wave of business practices is
increasingly taking hold across the world.
Many lessons are
embedded in the stories of success within our Most Innovative Companies
package; I’ve pulled out 15 here. One overarching conclusion: Global innovation
is more robust than ever.
The top two companies on this year’s list, BuzzFeed (No. 1) and Facebook (No. 2), have thrived by embracing
constant evolution in their products and in their processes. BuzzFeed’s video
teams are reorganized every three months; the native ad programs it creates for
marketers evolve through iterative testing; and new data metrics like viral
lift are developed, scrutinized, and tweaked. All that motion can seem messy,
but it breeds a culture of curiosity and learning, and, as CEOs Jonah Peretti
and Mark Zuckerberg clearly demonstrate, culture is strategy.
The four titans of tech continue to set the standard for
relentless progress and ambition within the last year. Amazon (No. 6) has deepened its dominance of e-commerce and web services
while pressing into entertainment and electronics—and making Amazon Prime the
must-have membership of the modern age. Apple (No. 7) launched a new watch, a new music service, new phones, new
tablets, new stores—it’s a breathless pace. Google’s reorientation as Alphabet (No. 8) underscores its ambition to do more than just "organize
all the world’s information," as it moves beyond its dominance in media to
target eradicating disease, self-driving cars, and so forth. Along with
Facebook, the three As are determined to be disrupters, and they collectively
push everyone else—and one another—to adopt an ever-faster metabolism.
Fast food has never been faster than at today’s Taco Bell (No. 10). CEO Brian Niccol encourages his team to, as he puts it,
"break a little glass." The Tex-Mex chain rolls out a new menu item
every five weeks; the longevity of those products depends on their market
success, a mirror of the test-and-iterate approach that drives Silicon Valley.
Niccol wants to be at the forefront of everything, from ordering to delivery.
All the activity has energized the company internally and made the brand more
relevant to its target youth customers.
Despite the financial limitations for music labels and artists
(and holdouts like Taylor Swift and Adele), music consumers have shown their
preference for Spotify (No. 19) and its kin. The next frontier—video—is
crumbling as well. When Netflix (No. 5) opened its service in more than 130 countries in one day, it
was simply reflecting an unstoppable train that runs from YouTube to The Man in
the High Castle. When BuzzFeed delivers 2.5 billion video views a month and
Facebook’s monthly video views jump from 1 billion to 8 billion in just over a
year, the predilection for on-demand access is undeniable.
5. THE MOBILE GAME IS JUST BEGINNING
Those devices in our pockets aren’t just a challenge to
traditional media. Nor is their impact restricted to booming platforms
like Uber (No. 4), Airbnb (No. 31), and Snapchat (No. 38). New services, buoyed by
rising design proficiency on mobile, are spawning entirely new markets. Robinhood (No. 11) has knifed into the
investing world; Hudl (No. 35) is
bringing its insights to more than 100,000 sports teams; Shyp (No. 46) will pick up and pack
anything for you, at the push of a button.
Hasbro (No. 50) was launched almost a century ago in Providence, Rhode
Island, yet that legacy hasn’t prevented it from unlocking new customers around
the world. GE (No. 20) has embraced its 100-plus-year-old heritage of invention to
find modern relevance. Even Vail Resorts (No. 44) has tapped new kinds of data to energize what seemed like a
settled ski business.
When BuzzFeed went global, it was merely following the flow of its
content.Universal (No. 12) reached $5 billion at the box office at a
record pace, thanks to international audiences, and Farfetch (No. 23) unlocks a cross-border
clientele for more than 300 fashion boutiques.
Noora Health (No. 45) was started at Stanford, has its design and engineering team
in San Francisco, and its CEO splits her time between Boston and Bangalore,
India. Cyanogen (No. 14) is based in California,
but its consumer base is in Asia. The India-based mobile ad player InMobi (No. 15) dominates in China as well
as at home.
Taco Bell found its new
mojo after its wildly successful launch of Doritos Locos Tacos. BuzzFeed
supercharged its reach when it embraced 30-plus outside platforms to distribute
its content.
Social media has made it easier than ever to express our
individuality, fostering new communities like Black Lives Matter (No. 9), which, without a budget or advertising, has
generated significant, tangible impact. In today’s world, the very concept of
an enterprise is being redefined.
CVS Health (No. 3) chose to forgo $2 billion in revenue from tobacco sales—a
bold step given Wall Street’s increasingly activist tendencies—in quest of a
longer-term vision: improving the health of its customers, not simply selling
them products.
12. MISSION DRIVES CHANGE
Sama Group (No. 39) is rethinking how not-for-profits are funded, while venture
firm Social Capital (No. 34) is reimagining how funding should be
deployed. John Oliver’s HBO show, produced by Sixteen String Jack (No.
29), has distinguished
itself by attacking serious issues with humor.
Medical treatments are evolving as fast as communication
technology; it’s just harder to see it. In the cancer arena alone, Novocure (No. 16) is deploying electricity, Amgen (No. 18) is unleashing viruses, and Bristol-Myers Squibb (No. 17) is enlisting a person’s own T cells to
attack tumors and save lives.
The buzz for wearable technology has abated, but Fitbit (No. 37) continues to broaden its
user base. Drones are not just toys and are finding new applications across
industries. What was niche is becoming mainstream, as Jaunt (No. 49) is discovering with virtual reality and as Riot Games (No. 22) has precipitated with e-sports.
If you connect all these new companies and changes—from Slack (No. 26) in the work world to Airbnb in travel, from Robinhood to
BuzzFeed to Hudl, from Black Lives Matter to Riot Games to Uber—what emerges is
a landscape very different from the one we grew up in. Self-driving cars.
DNA–targeted treatments. The advances are inexorable, exciting, mind-blowing.
Those who embrace these transitions (even at unlikely companies like Taco Bell)
will have the tools to influence them. What could be more powerful than that?
ROBERT SAFIAN
http://www.fastcompany.com/3056039/15-lessons-of-innovation-for-2016?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-newsletter&position=2&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=02202016
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