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Companies 2016
GETTING PAST NOT INVENTED HERE
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THE MOST INNOVATIVE
COMPANIES 2016
GETTING PAST NOT INVENTED HERE
MICHAEL RINGEL
ANDREW TAYLOR
HADI ZABLIT
3 INNOVATION IN 2016
The Challenges of External Innovation
Overcoming Internal Resistance
Putting It All Together: Value Creation Through Innovation
1 5 APPENDIX
1 Apple 26 Pfizer
2 Google 27 General Motors
3 Tesla Motors 28 JPMorgan Chase
4 Microsoft 29 Johnson & Johnson
5 Amazon 30 AXA
6 Netflix 31 Nike
7 Samsung Group 32 Expedia
8 Toyota 33 Allianz
9 Facebook 34 SpaceX
10 IBM 35 Xiaomi
11 Bayer 36 The Walt Disney Company
12 Southwest Airlines 37 Hilton
13 Hewlett-Packard 38 Renault
14 BMW 39 NTT Docomo
15 General Electric 40 Intel
16 Daimler 41 Marriott International
17 Uber 42 3M
18 Dupont 43 Dell
19 Dow Chemical Company 44 Orange
20 BASF 45 Siemens
21 Airbnb 46 Huawei
22 Under Armour 47 Bristol-Myers Squibb
23 Gilead Sciences 48 Honda
24 Regeneron Pharmaceuticals 49 BT Group
25 Cisco Systems 50 Procter & Gamble
acquisitionsCisco Systems is a leading exam- ness models. Investors bid up new revenue
plewhile others use commercial arrange- streams. Consider the case of Under Armour,
ments such as licensing to gain access to ideas which joined the most innovative companies
and intellectual property, a practice that is list in 2016 at number 22. It is the top fashion
common in health care. Manufacturers, retail- and luxury company in our 2016 value creators
ers, financial institutions, and others have set study, with a 42.5% total shareholder return
up shop in tech centers such as Silicon Valley over the five years from 2011 through 2015.1
and Boston with the express goal of tapping
into technology-based innovation. In recent Calling Under Armour an apparel company is
years, big companies have sought to emulate somewhat akin to saying that Apple is a hard-
startups by pursuing corporate venture capital ware company. Just as Apple innovates on the
and sponsoring incubators and accelerators. basis of empowering users, Under Armour in-
novates on the idea of making athletes better.
These are all viable approaches to overcoming It uses technology in all aspects of its busi-
the not-invented-here mindset, but the right ness. This approach has led it from the
method needs to be applied in the right high-performance fabrics that were the com-
circumstances. panys genesis to connected fitness devices
and wearables and, most recently, to a new
venture, Under Armour Connected Fitness.
Putting It All Together: Value This endeavor, a combination of internal and
Creation Through Innovation acquired resources, seeks to transform fitness
Innovation is ultimately about creating value. and performance through an ecosystem of
Customers flock to novel products and busi- digital devices, tools, and data that help users
78
80
72 70
66 68
64 65 63 65
62 62
60 57
40
33 32
26 26
22 21 21
20 18
15 13 15 14
0
Internal Strategic Incubator Employee External firms Acquisitions
sources partnership ideation we hire to or licensing
(company) forums generate ideas deals
Competitive Strategic Customer Suppliers Customer Social
intelligence partnership suggestions or vendors complaints network or big
(academia) data mining
Exhibit 3 | Strong Innovators Are Good at Using Multiple Data Sources for Innovation
HOW WOULD YOU RATE YOUR COMPANYS SKILL AT LEVERAGING EACH OF THE FOLLOWING
DATA AND ANALYSIS TYPES AS PART OF YOUR INNOVATION EFFORTS?
60
40 36
23
20 18 16 14 12
0
Company data Own proprietary Patent Scientific Semantic Natural-
(such as business data (such as data literature networks language
descriptions and customer data processing
funding events) and product
usage data)
60
40
29
19 22 22
20 12 14
0
Identifying Providing Revealing Understanding Identifying external Informing innovation
new themes input to ideation market trends ecosystems players with investment decisions
innovation potential
Strong innovators Weak innovators
Source: BCG Global Innovation Survey, 2016.
Note: The Strong innovator and Weak innovator categories are based on survey responses.
Finding the next big thing databases, scientific literature, and expert
industry opinions.
Avoiding disruption by unearthing emerg-
ing technologies and innovation trends
Harnessing Innovation Analytics
Linking with startups and leading inven- As the amount of data has burgeoned, so has
tors to accelerate innovation the sophistication of the tools to analyze and
visualize it. BCGs Center for Innovation Ana-
Building networks of collaborators to stay lytics uses a suite of tools and approaches to
on top of leading-edge technology tap into multiple public and proprietary sourc-
es in order to help companies answer tough
Assessing the impact of new technologies questions about innovation and growth. These
on the business can pertain to identifying adjacent opportuni-
ties (including novel uses of a companys ex-
Identifying adjacent growth opportunities isting capabilities), finding white-space oppor-
tunities, monetizing a companys own
Attaining a position of technology intellectual property, identifying and screen-
leadership ing acquisition targets and venture partners,
and gaining an understanding of new technol-
As Brooks discovered, a huge amount of data ogies that may represent a competitive threat.
is available to help innovators shape and pur-
sue their innovation strategies. But this in it- Consider a hypothetical company that has an
self causes problems. The first is identifying interest in moving into cybersecurity. It might
what data exists and figuring out where to want to begin by understanding the shape of
find it. The second, and usually much bigger, investment in the sector: the key applications,
challenge is sorting, organizing, and gleaning the underlying technologies, the most import-
usable insights from millions of files (or pag- ant players in technology and funding, and
es) from disparate depositories, databases, changes in investing trends. This requires a lot
websites, and other sources. Plenty of compa- of data: from 2011 to 2015, venture firms in-
nies mine patent data, for example, to keep vested more than $17 billion in nearly 1,000
track of the IP their competitors are develop- cybersecurity-related firms. Exhibit 5 offers an
ing. Its a far different order of complexity to example of how this data might be visualized
pinpoint commonalities and directions when and analyzed. This semantic analysis (which
the data comes from multiple sources such as looks for commonalitiesof words and con-
global patent filing trends, venture funding cepts, for examplein unrelated sources of
Mobile-device security
Risk and threat
advisory services
Identity the and
authentication
Network security
E-mail security
unstructured data) reveals ten technology sub- nomic collaboration between the greater Seat-
sectors in cybersecurity, such as identity man- tle and Vancouver regions. The project was in-
agement and real-time threat intelligence. spired by the rise of innovation hubs around
the world, and business and government lead-
This high-level view is just the start; its also ers in both Seattle and Vancouver saw great
possible for executives to drill down to infor- promise in building on the regions strong foun-
mation on individual companies in order to dation of innovators and innovation assets.
spot whether and where rivals are making
investments, or to identify attractive partner- Innovation analytics surfaced some surprising
ship or acquisition candidates. Companies reality checks. Data from LinkedIn, for exam-
can combine insights from funding data with ple, showed low connectivity between individ-
patents, social media, scientific publications, uals in Seattle and Vancouver; talent did not
and a variety of other sources to make flow freely between the cities. For LinkedIn
informed strategic decisions. members in Vancouver, connections to mem-
bers in Seattle accounted for less than 1% of
For companies in industries undergoing total connections; for members in Seattle, con-
technology-driven evolution or disruption, nections to people in Vancouver accounted for
innovation analytics can provide a critical only 0.4% of connections. Data from Thomson
means of staying abreast of changes and Reuters showed that educational institutions
determining which new technologies to apply in both cities trailed other areas in academic
to innovation efforts. A major chemical citations. And data from investment databases
company has used innovation analytics to showed that the availability of local capital
better understand opportunities in bio- was an issue. These and other analytics-driven
renewables, for example. And a leading telco insights helped shape the challenge facing the
used it to inform new-product development by two cities and give direction to the efforts to
mapping the technology innovation in user build a more vibrant innovation corridor.
interfaces among new entrants, incumbents,
other rivals, and academics.
The Resurgence of Innovation CVC and incubation have come and gone
Models and Mechanisms over the years, but past efforts often lacked
In recent years, many companies have redis- a strong link to the sponsoring companys
covered a broad variety of models for exter- strategy. This wave of alternative innovation
nal innovation, taking a page from the suc- vehicles is much more tightly focused on
cess of venture-backed startups that have responding to disruptive trends and enabling
disrupted multiple industries, including not new business models or extending compa-
just technology but also financial services, nies current capabilities. The new models
media and entertainment, travel and tourism, are more closely and thoughtfully linked
and marketing in general. Corporate venture to the sponsoring companies corporate and
capital (CVC), accelerators and incubators, innovation strategies and existing innovation
and innovation labs are again becoming more systems.
common, especially among large companies.
BCGs analysis of 210 top firmsthe 30 larg- Industry context often determines which ap-
est companies in each of seven industries proach is best. The speed of innovation, for
(automotive, chemicals, consumer goods, fi- example, varies from one industry to the
nancial services, media and publishing, tech- next. Where innovation momentum is high
Corporate venture capital Penetration in 2010 (%) Added penetration as of 2015 (%)
Innovation labs
Accelerators and incubators
Accelerators and incubators, Number of companies in the sample
including partnerships
Sources: BCG Corporate Venturing database; BCG analysis.
#
Sample includes the top 30 companies by market capitalization in each of seven industries. The total number of companies was 210.
*
Sample includes the top ten companies by market capitalization in each of seven industries. The total number of companies was 70.
The companys JLABS in San Francisco, South The Importance of Incentives and
San Francisco, San Diego, Houston, Toronto, Rewards
and Boston provide flexible incubator ser- J&Js approach to assigning credit for innova-
vices for 150 high-potential firms whose work tion highlights a big issue for many compa-
has not yet entered clinical development. J&J nies. The challenge is often not just how to
screens approximately ten companies for source innovations externally but how to
each one thats accepted. These companies keep the internal organization from killing
can count on us for input and support to the them off. When individuals are measured and
extent they want it, Stoffels says. But they rewarded on their output, and that output
dont have to accept anything. doesnt include things from the outside,
external sourcing becomes more difficult
than it should be.
The challenge is to keep the Scientists at one large pharmaceutical com-
internal organization from pany that has such an incentive system re-
cently resisted licensing a new molecule be-
killing external innovations. cause they had been working along similar
lines and saw the molecule, which performed
better than the in-house version, as competi-
J&Js six innovation labs provide services for tion. Instead, internal researchers should get
companies at a slightly later position: those credit for successfully developing ideas from
just entering clinical development. These labs the outside. But thats only the minimum
are empowered to make deals that connect companies should also think about incentives
these companies directly with J&Js business for the internal organization to be active in
units. scouting new ideas and cultivating new-idea
generators.
The companys venture capital arm has more
than 80 investments in young companies. In Resistance to ideas not invented here is a
Europe, where access to funding is often cou- cultural problem, and corporate cultures can
pled with the challenge of access to lab space be difficult to change. There are some things
and capabilities, the company combines these that companies can do quickly, however, to
services in its JLINX centers. make their organizations more receptive to
external innovations.
J&J works hard to ensure that external inno-
vations are seamlessly meshed with internal Set the right incentives and metrics. As weve
ones. It rewards internal unit leaders equally noted, companies can do a lot to mitigate
whether innovation originates inside or out- internal resistance by putting in place incen-
side. Everything gets the same credit, Stof- tives that reward innovations when they take
fels notes. Internal research scientists are hold, regardless of the original source. They
BCGs annual ranking of the most innovative respondents to rank the most innovative com-
companies is based on a survey of senior panies both inside and outside their industry.
executives who represent a wide variety of To create a better balance of subjective and
industries in every region worldwide, as well objective measures, respondents votes for
as an analysis of select financial metrics. companies within their industry accounted
for 30% of the ranking, their votes for compa-
Before 2008, these rankings were based on a nies outside their industry accounted for
single criterionrespondents picks. That 30%, andto simplify the financial inputs
year, we expanded the scope and added three three-year TSR accounted for 40%.
financial measures: total shareholder return
(TSR) as well as revenue and margin growth. In 2016, we assigned startups a three-year
Each measure reflected a three-year period, TSR for the top-50 analysis to avoid disadvan-
and TSR reflected stock price appreciation taging new companies with high valuations
and dividends. Respondents votes deter- that promised strong returns but had not had
mined 80% of the ranking, TSR accounted for a public offering. We defined startups as pri-
10%, revenue growth determined 5%, and vate companies founded after 2001. The TSR
margin growth accounted for 5%. we used reflected the average three-year TSR
for companies that had a market capitaliza-
In 2015, we revisited our methodology to tion of more than $1 billion, had an initial
make the results more robust and reflect the public offering from 2010 to 2012, and were
top innovators across all industries. We asked founded after 2001.
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