To explore the state of innovation, The Boston Consulting Group fields an annual innovation survey of thousands of senior-level executives. Since 2005, our survey has revealed the 50 companies that executives ranked as the most innovative. This interactive shows the dynamism of the survey results over time. You can explore rich performance data going back a decade, and you can also see which companies stand out for their movements on, off, and around the list.

The Most Innovative Companies

An Interactive Guide

2013 to 2014 change (%)
2015
rank
Company Revenue EBIT TSR R&D
spending
1 Company 00.0 00.0 00.0 00.0
Steady Innovators
Companies on the list every year from 2005 to 2015
Movers
Advanced ten or more positions from 2014 to 2015
New Entrants
Entered the list in 2015
Returnees
Returned to the list in 2015 after falling off in 2014 or before

BCG's rankings of the most innovative companies are based on a survey of senior executives representing a wide variety of industries in every region. Before 2008, our rankings of the most innovative companies were based on a single criterion—respondents' picks. In 2008, we added three financial measures: three-year growth in total shareholder returns (TSR), revenue, and margins. (TSR includes stock price appreciation and dividends.) Respondents' votes counted for 80 percent of the ranking, TSRs for 10 percent, and revenue and margin growth for 5 percent each.

In 2015, on the tenth anniversary of the launch of BCG's list of most innovative companies, we chose to revisit our methodology to make the results more robust and reflective of top innovators across all industries. We asked respondents to rank the most innovative companies both inside and outside their industry. We also began using five-year growth in TSR to indicate performance over a longer time horizon. To create a better balance of subjective and objective measures, we made respondents' votes for companies within their industry count for 30 percent of the ranking, their votes for companies outside their industry for 30 percent, and—to simplify the financial inputs—three-year TSR for 40 percent.

Sources: 2005-2010 BCG/BusinessWeek Senior Executive Innovation Survey; 2012-2015 BCG Global Innovators Survey; BCG ValueScience Center analysis.

Note: BCG did not publish a survey in 2011, choosing instead to take a step back and redesign the survey to focus much more on how companies and industries innovate.

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Rank 99

Revenue change (%) 10

EBIT change (%) 10

TSR change (%) 10

R&D spending change (%) 10

2005
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To embed this interactive on your site, copy and paste the code in the window. Please credit and link to The Boston Consulting Group's latest Most Innovative Companies report at bcg.perspectives