Uncovering Innovation: The Top 100 Global Innovators

Innovation is an oft-used buzzword in business. People, organizations, conferences and even technological devices all claim to be innovative. But what does innovation really mean, how can we measure it – and what does it reveal?

At Thomson Reuters, we perform an annual study – the Top 100 Global Innovators –to quantify innovation and name the world’s most innovative companies based on a series of patent-related metrics. We do this because we believe patents are a proxy for innovation, and that innovation drives economic success; essentially, a great idea without patent protection and commercialization is simply a great idea. Our study seeks to recognize those companies that are moving our world forward by exemplifying the Lifecycle of Innovation: the discovery, protection and commercialization of ideas. So who made the cut this year? Check out the 2015 Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Innovators.

The Top 100 Global Innovators list spans numerous industries each year, with mainstays like Automotive, Semiconductor & Electronic Components and Computer Hardware. This year’s list saw some changing faces of innovation, however, with the introduction of new industries such as Electrical Power, indicative of an increase in activity to find alternative power sources. Such findings point toward patent analyses’ ability to uncover trends and identify shifting priorities in the global economy.

Also new this year, our IP analysts took a regional view of innovation for the first time by examining innovative organizations that are headquartered in the United States’ Bay Area. This region, known as Silicon Valley, is home to some of the world’s top tech companies and regarded globally as a hotbed of innovation. We looked at leaders in this area to see how they compared with our Global Top 100 list, and found innovation activity in several industries unique to this region that are not represented on the global list: LED lighting technologies, Social Media & Internet and Electronic payments to name just a few. Read the report to learn more – this will be an interesting space to watch for how and when these industries and innovations propagate globally.

Congratulations to the Thomson Reuters 2015 Top 100 Global Innovators and the Top Bay Area Innovators. Visit StateOfInnovation.com to learn more about how these leading companies are changing our world, and join in on the conversation!