Apple returns to being the most innovative company, dethroning Alphabet and Amazon which, however, remain on the podium. But the real news of the “The Most Innovative Companies 2020” compiled by the Boston Consulting Group it is the irruption of two large Chinese groups into the top 10: Alibaba, which passes from 23rd place in 2019 to seventh, and above all Huawei, the giant that so frightens Trump in the race for 5G and therefore for technological supremacy, which was only 48th last year and instead today it is sixth, just behind the Korean Samsung which is confirmed as fifth. The result is that another sacred monster of Silicon Valley, Facebook, finds itself almost outside the top ten, right in tenth place from eighth in 2019, overtaken by Sony and pressed by Tesla. The exploit of the Dragon is confirmed by the 14th place of Tencent, which last year was even outside the 50, which instead includes the only "Italian", FCA, 46th.
But how is this ranking drawn up, with what criteria? Meanwhile, the judgment of the Boston Consulting Group does not fail to be merciless, in the sense that the ranking is always highly variable. I am indeed only eight companies have a permanent place in the top 50 since 2005: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Samsung and Toyota. The authors of the study, conducted before the Covid-19 pandemic, interviewed over 2.500 managers from all over the world, particularly rewarding companies with an innovative strategy of a high standard and long-term.
If persistence pays off, investments matter too. Bearing the title of innovator counts, but only 45% of respondents declare themselves to be committed innovators – that is, who see innovation as an absolute priority and support this commitment with significant investments – and just over a third have innovation among their top three priorities in the company. 30% then belong to the "skeptical innovators", those who do not consider innovation either a strategic priority or a significant funding objective. The remaining 25% are "confused innovators", in which there is an imbalance between the importance they attach to innovation and the investments made to actually insert it into the strategy.
The BCG study suggests that engaged innovators are the real winners. Nearly 60% of respondents say they have generated an increasing volume of sales of products and services launched in the last three years, compared to 30% of skeptics and 47% of confused. The highest percentage of engaged innovators he is in the financial and pharmaceutical sector (56%), while the lowest is found in industrial goods (37%) and wholesale and retail trade (32%).
The analysis also holds some surprises. Amazon, for example, is to be considered a leader in innovation on the healthcare front, while Alibaba, which mainly deals with e-commerce, is a particularly innovative player in the financial sector. This tells us that the intersectoral activity, the versatility of these large groups, has increased by 20% since 2016 and it doesn't just concern companies already known for having expanded into other sectors, just like Amazon. Now even car manufacturers, chemical companies, retailers and industrial producers have changed pace and are competing in different realities for opportunities in new business models. Data shows that this type of disruptor delivered an annual shareholder return of 2,7% from 2016 to 2019, compared to companies that focused solely on defending their turf.
Finally, the size of the companies. The Boston Consulting Group's annual ranking is yet another confirmation that large companies have an advantage on the innovation front. More than 40% of large companies, i.e. those that have sales of $XNUMX billion or more, manages to overcome the major difficulties of the implementation process which, generally, concern the lack of a method in the allocation of resources and the difficulty in aligning the internal organization with the innovation strategy. The result is that compared to the median in their industry, they're earning four times as much sales percentage.
