post Tuesday March 4, 2014
The editors of the MIT Technology Review assembled a list of 50 companies who have made strides in the past year that defines their field; the so-called Smart Companies. Surprisingly, companies such as Facebook and Apple were nowhere to be found on that list, because fame and reputation were not taken into account by MIT. Innovation is what truly matters.
It is hard to explain how to define a smart company. That is why you have to look for certain signs. For example, when a smart company promotes its invention or product in the media, an immediate response of the competition will always follow. That is because the competition knows that the smart company is the best in their category and has to rethink their strategy because of that fact. According to MIT, the smartest company in the past year is Illumina. This company is reducing the price of DNA sequencing to help the practice of medicine. Tesla Motors is the runner-up and Google finished third in the list of MIT. What did these 3 companies do to become the smartest companies of the world?
Google owns the most used Internet browser in the world, Google Maps is perhaps the best navigation system in the world right now and Android is dominating the market of tablets and mobile phones. So why is a company as big as Google not on the top spot of the list? MIT claims that Google has not been innovative enough, their biggest income still comes from advertisements. Furthermore, failures such as the Nexus One or Google TV were held silent for the public and Google’s acquisition of Motorola has also turned out to be a huge failure. Google’s biggest problem is that they rely too much on income of ads, while that business is not guaranteed to be resourceful for the future. However, Google is trying to make up for those failures and is invading the market of home electronics after purchasing Nest Labs Inc. last January in order to compete with Apple. Hopefully, this acquisition will lead to a game-changing innovation.
Tesla
Tesla Motors is an exception when it comes to selling electric cars. Even though Tesla’s cars are twice as expensive as the electric cars of Nissan and General Motors, Tesla managed to sell twice as many cars as the former companies. However, Tesla is trying to produce vehicles which are less expensive and around the $35,000 price limit. What makes Tesla different from other car companies is that they produce their own car parts. For example, the Supercharger is the most important charger for Tesla-car owners, it enables the owner to charge their vehicle in less than half an hour. Tesla is the perfect example of a company that is innovating and standing out from the rest, which forces other car companies to rethink and change their strategy.
Illumina
Last but not least, Illumina is according to MIT the smartest company in 2013. Illumina is located in San Diego and is the world’s biggest seller of DNA sequencing machines. The company serves 70% of the market and is said to be the future of DNA-technology. However, the real reason why MIT picks Illumina as their number one is that they made 10 of their latest machines affordable ($1,000) for medical research. This is truly beneficial for researchers, because they now have the possibility to do large-scale studies that could lead to better understanding of diseases and achieving personalized medicine. Illumina already has an iPad app that lets you review your genome if it has been analyzed.
Even though these three companies are totally different in the products they are selling, they have one thing in common: innovation. Every one of them is leading or refining their market, forcing the competition to innovate as well. That alone is very admirable and furthermore important for the society to function nowadays.
Source: wired
Image courtesy of Renjith Krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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