Samsung ranks fifth and LG 18th among this year’s Top 50 innovative global companies as assessed by the Boston Consulting Group.
First on the largely predictable list was Apple, followed by Google’s Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft.
BCG polled 2,500 executives of more than 1,000 businesses around the world. It said it is not an easy task for a company to remain innovative, and 48 of the 160 global companies ranked by BCG since 2005 disappeared from the list after being includes just once.
Only eight companies have been included all 14 times since the rankings began, including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Samsung.
The American management consultants focused on 1,200 companies spanning 19 industries and concluded that the belief that smaller companies are more agile is not accurate. In fact, 42 percent of businesses with total sales of more than US$1 billion achieved results that surpassed the industry average.
Also, BCG is satisfied that aggressive investments in innovation yields huge profits. The industry “leaders” spent 1.4 times more than the “laggards” on innovation, which yielded a four-fold increase in profits compared to sales.