World's 50 Most Innovative Companies 2021, who are you investing in?

Hi everyone :wave:

The annual Fast Co. list of the world’s most innovative companies has been announced.

I personally love reading this report, and usually expect to see a consumer tech company taking #1 spot.

Not this year.

In fact, joint first place goes to Moderna ($MRNA) for being first to market with an effective COVID-19 vaccine and Pfizer ($PFE) - BioNTech ($BNTX) for making COVID-19 vaccines that can travel.

Elsewhere, there are a number of publicly-listed companies on the list of 50 companies.

Top 10

  1. Moderna ($MRNA)
  2. Pfizer ($PFE) - BioNTech ($BNTX
  3. Shopify ($SHOP)
  4. SpaceX
  5. SpringHill Company
  6. Epic Games
  7. Netflix
  8. Tock
  9. Microsoft ($MSFT)
  10. Graphika

What do you think of the ranking, and which companies are you investing in?

https://www.fastcompany.com/90603436/the-worlds-most-innovative-companies-2021


  • This should not be read as personal investment advice. When you invest, your capital is at risk

Interesting list but I wouldn’t invest on it :joy: :+1: Seems like old news and likely at peak prices. Besides if they consider the NBA the “14th most Innovative company in the world” for using an empty resort to play games then I worry about the human race :joy:
Interesting read though.

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I think the definition of Innovative is taken quite broadly in this list
Interesting browse nonetheless

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The NBA has done that NFT trading card thing maybe?

The companies are innovative if you consider the past 12 months but its not much use for investors as they’ve essentially had the success and the accompanying price rise already. Need to look ahead to next years.

Maybe FT can get on it next year…

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I was curious how Microsoft could be the world’s 9th most innovative company.
Apparently “for firing on all cylinders”. Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

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As part of the huge number of people forced to use Teams this year I also question this :joy:

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Just because they’ve been around a long time doesn’t mean they aren’t doing anything innovative. They are making fortunes with cloud based stuff

I agree teams isn’t the best though

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I did think NBC being on list was funny as surely they showed they are quite the opposite :joy: they simply followed the Netflix model knowing they were well behind the curve.

And the Avacado one is surely a joke, it’s saving packaging surely?

The best though was Snowflake as it made me think how Republican investors would fume at the list being “Woke” and that name seemed to put the boot in :joy:

Disclaimer - I am neither left or right wing, both have some idiots, but it did seem Bernie or AOC wrote it :joy: :+1:

I would have thought Peloton would have been higher in this list. But will be interesting to see how this company operates post lock down with gyms reopening. They may well try and get their products and serivces into gyms and leisure centres.

Not sure I’d consider a bicycle with app cutting edge innovation. :thinking: Peloton vs. SpaceX… same same.

Edit: this might be biased on my personal work environment, but I’d rate Deepmind (or other AI companies) in the top10, essentially solving protein folding last year and making leaps in the reinforcement learning field.

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Although im in no way pro Peloton I just thought it might have come higher in this list. Some pundits would argue that the company is quite innovative.

I don’t really think you can compare them to Space X. Its like trying to compare a pharma trying to find a cure for Cancer vs. Fidget Spinner innovation but then again…

https://www.bbntimes.com/companies/innovation-lessons-from-the-humble-fidget-spinner

I think it is the title “Most Innovative” that is a bit OTT. It should read who made most out of lockdown but then surely Amazon should be number 1 on either scale?

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I agree and their company headlines: Moderna For making a COVID-19 vaccine that can travel. It still needs -20 so no it can’t travel.

Yeah crazy Alphabet isn’t on there for AI alone between Waymo’s leadership in autonomous driving and Deepmind they surely deserve a spot, that’s before you even start on quantum computing or anything else.

Deepmind do incredible work and while AlphaFold is extremely impressive I think ‘solving protein folding’ is a bit of an exaggeration at the moment - although I doubt it will be long before that is a very credible claim.

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Do bear in mind that -20 fits within the regular (freezer) cold chain and that’s for 6 month storage. It also lasts 30 days refrigerated. I think it’s very fair to say it can travel.

I know I’m a virologist! Most vaccines are okay at -20 so nothing revolutionary there.To really say it can travel you need it -4 or ideally room temp. You’re going to struggle getting it around the world otherwise, the cold chain doesn’t work in sub saharan africa.

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