Boston Consulting Group has named technology giant Apple as the most innovative company in 2016 in its annual list of the world's 50 "Most Innovative Companies."
Following Apple is the internet search-giant Google, ranked second, and the electric carmaker Tesla in third place. Meanwhile, ride-hailing service Uber and home rental platform Airbnb made it to the list for the first time.
Based on the survey of 1,500 senior executives representing a wide range of industries in every region, below is the compiled list of the most innovative firms of 2016.
Apple has been topping BCG's list of corporate innovators for the past eleven straight years and remains the world's most valuable company. However, there are growing concerns that the company is losing its innovation edge under its CEO, Tim Cook.
Google spends nearly $13 billion on R&D annually. The company's research interests extend far beyond its search and software products. For instance, the company's "moonshot" division has projects ranging from smart thermostats and high-speed Internet to self-driving cars.
Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of electric car maker Tesla Motors, increased Tesla's production of cars by 64 percent in 2016. The company is banking on its newly opened Gigafactory 1 in Nevada to provide batteries for 500,000 cars a year.
Since CEO Satya Nadella took the reins of the company in February 2014, Microsoft has increasingly been considered as an innovator. For instance, when Microsoft and Apple held product introductions a day apart in October 2016, Mashable reported that Microsoft won the battle with products like Surface Studio and Surface Dial, Microsoft Edge, and the AR/VR Headsets.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos told Recode's Code Conference in May 2016 that Amazon has the "gold standard culture for innovation and pioneering work." Additionally, John Rossman, a former Amazon executive, noted that Amazon is always focused on three things - improving customer experience, driving operational effectiveness and developing new business models.
In 2017, the streaming media company is expected to spend $6 billion on programming, creating over 1,000 hours of programming such as its hit series "Stranger Things."
The South Korean giant spent more than $13 billion on research and development in 2016 while supporting 50,000 researchers and engineers at 42 locations globally. Also, Samsung vice-chairman and CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon announced that the company would spend $1.2 billion in the US over the next four years on what it calls "human-centred IoT."
Toyota is still in the innovation competition despite new technologies such as autonomous driving offered by disruptors such as Uber and Lyft.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off the company's 10-year technology roadmap in April, which ranged from products such as WhatsApp and Instagram to more ambitious efforts in artificial intelligence, connectivity and virtual and augmented reality.
IBM, the company which helped spawn the computer age, has shifted its focus from manufacturing to services. In 2016, IBM broke the US patent record with 8,088 patents granted to its inventors among which, more than 2,700 patents were for inventions related to AI, cognitive computing, and cloud computing.