The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced its 2013 Top 100 Global Innovators list. This honours the 100 corporations and institutions around the world that are at the heart of innovation as measured by a series of proprietary patent-related metrics. The full report is available at www.top100innovators.com.
The 100 organisations in the 2013 study outperformed the S&P 500 for the third consecutive year, by 4 percent in annual stock price growth and 2 percent in market cap weighted revenue growth. Collectively they generated $4.5 trillion in revenue, nearly twice the GDP of the United Kingdom. The Top Innovators also added 266,152 new jobs over the last year, a rate that was 0.81 percent higher than the new job creation rate among constituents of the S&P 500. This year’s winners also outspent the S&P 500 by 8.8 percent on R&D; collectively they invested $223 billion in their research and development efforts.
The intense competition in the smartphone space is on clear display in this year’s Top 100 Global Innovators list, with the major players in the smartphone patent wars present: Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Google and BlackBerry. This is the first year for BlackBerry on the Top 100 Innovators list, driven by a 38 percent surge in patent filings between 2010 and 2011, and 17 percent growth in patent filings between 2011 and 2012.
The surge in R&D spending among Top 100 Global Innovators is also noteworthy. With the 100 organisations in the study spending U.S. $223.2 billion on R&D in 2012, the group outspent the S&P 500 by over 8.8 percent on R&D last year. Additionally, the Top 100 spend 5 percent of revenue on R&D, whereas the S&P 500 spend just 2.1 percent of revenue in this area.
The Top 100 methodology, by virtue of its criteria, favours fast-moving, hyper-competitive industries such as semiconductors/electronic components and computer hardware, where product lifecycles are short and advancements in technology are demanded by users. This has historically impacted the inclusion of pharmaceutical firms, which tend to have longer R&D cycles, in the list. Despite this, Abbott Laboratories and Johnson & Johnson broke into the Top 100 list this year, by virtue of their strong global patent portfolios. Roche also made this year’s list for the third year in a row.
North America continued to lead in the number of organisations it has on the list, with 46 this year, comprising 45 from the U.S. and one from Canada. Asia had the next highest, with 32, comprising 28 from Japan, 3 from South Korea and 1 from Taiwan. Europe contributed 22 honourees, with the largest representation coming from France (12) and Switzerland (4). Mainland China is once again notably absent from this year’s list of Top 100 Global Innovators. Despite the fact that China leads the world in patent volume, the majority of patents filed in the country are only filed domestically, which limits the region’s global influence in the Top 100 Global Innovators study.
The semiconductor and electronic components industry continued to lead in 2013, with 23 representative companies, a 28 percent increase over the previous year. Semiconductor representation has increased by 64 percent since the program’s inception, when there were just 14 semiconductor companies on the list. Computer hardware was the next most prolific industry, with 11 companies. The auto industry contributed 8 companies to the Top 100 list, up from 7 last year; new to the list is Nissan. Automotive representation has grown by 167 percent since the beginning of the Top 100 analysis when there were only 3 automotive companies present. The telecom and industrial industries each contributed 7 companies to the Top 100 group this year.
The Thomson Reuters 2013 Top 100 Global Innovator methodology is based on four principle criteria: overall patent volume, patent grant success rate, global reach of the portfolio and patent influence as evidenced by citations. The peer-reviewed methodology was executed using Thomson Reuters Derwent World Patents Index® (DWPI), Derwent Patents Citations Index™, Quadrilateral Patent Index™, and Thomson Innovation®, its IP and intelligence collaboration platform. Comparative financial analysis was done using the Thomson Reuters Advanced Analytics for Deal-Making platform.
