The Most Innovative Companies in 2023
Every year, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) releases their Most Innovative Companies ranking. Based on a survey of over 1,000 innovation executives polled in Dec. 2022 and Jan. 2023, BCG assessed a company’s performance on four dimensions:
- Global mindshare: the number of votes received from all global innovation executives
- Industry peer view: the number of votes received from executives in a company’s own industry
- Industry disruption: the Diversity Index (Herfindahl-Hirschman) of votes across industries
- Value creation: total shareholder return, including share buybacks, over the 3-year period (Jan. 2020 – Dec. 2022)
We’ve provided a more visual representation of these results in the graphic above.
Highlights From the Data
For the fourth straight year, Apple is considered the most innovative company in the world. In fact, Apple has held this title every year since 2005 with the exception of 2019.
BCG added additional context on several companies in its report, including Germany’s Bosch (37th). According to BCG, the engineering and technology company has a global R&D organization of 84,800 employees across 130 locations. Bosch has also maintained R&D spending (as a share of sales) at between 7.6% and 8.2% from 2018 through 2021.
Another highlight was Samsung (7th), which spent over $17 billion (9% of annual sales) on R&D in 2021, making the South Korean conglomerate one of the world’s largest spenders on innovation. Samsung was also granted 6,300 U.S. patents in 2022, the most out of any company.
As this ranking shows, innovative companies aren’t just tech companies. McDonald’s (34th) is considered by BCG as the “restaurant industry frontrunner in technology innovation and investment”. For example, McDonald’s recently acquired Apprente, a startup that develops voice-based technologies, and Dynamic Yield, a firm specializing in creating customizable online experiences. McDonald’s aims to leverage these technologies to improve ordering times and offer customers better choices.