Most Innovative Companies Story from Fast Company

Some interesting mentions in the "50 Most Innovative Companies" Fast Company cover story.

Yea, Facebook, Google and Apple (among others) are all innovative and interesting companies, but the ones on the list that stood out to me weren't because of who they were, but because of what's described in the Fast Company writeup.

- Walmart and it's sustainability initiatives

- Cisco and it's efforts in sports

- Patients Like Me and the idea of social networking your own health care

- Sportvision and technology to measure the effectiveness of MLB players

- Twitter and mention of twitter using Daily Show correspondent (and author of "More Information Than You Require") John Hodgeman

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Also of note from this issue of Fast Company was mention of the video sites Fora.tv and Ted.com. I've certainly heard of both sites beforfe... maybe someday I'll actually spend some time perusing them.

BusinessWeek Magazine - May 25 Issue

Some interesting pieces from the May 25 BusinessWeek issue:

"Wal-Mart: Making Its Suppliers Go Green" is about the "encouragement" to have an environmentally sound supply chain provided by the retail giant to it's suppliers. People can certainly quibble with some of the actions taken by Wal-Mart around it's workforce, but it is positive to see the world's largest retailer acting on behalf of the environment.

"Cisco's Big Push into New Markets" provides a look at how the networking company is currently extremely active in entering new markets... from sports to servers to consumer electronics. One interesting facet of this (particularly in relation to the server foray) is how this puts Cisco in competition with some of it's largest partners who resell Cisco gear as part of integrated solutions for corporations.

"Giving Products a Good Backstory" provides a look at the marketing firm Starlight Runner Entertainment and how it's helps corporate clients create narrative stories around existing products and marketing ideas. The end result of this being larger and more lasting narratives to influence consumers. It's an interesting read and I also found compelling the backstory of the firm's founder, Jeff Gomez, that went from being a public school creative writing teacher to launching a gaming magazine and then working for a gaming company. Very entertaining career path...

Fast Company 2009 "50 Most Innovative Companies" List

Interesting stuff from the March 2009 issue of Fast Company Magazine. With Jason Kilar of Hulu on the cover, the issue contains Fast Company's list of the "50 Most Innovative Companies" in the world.

Granted, a list such as this is compiled entirely at the discretion of Fast Company writers and staff, but in interesting nonetheless.

Some of what I found most interesting from the piece (with links to the FC write-ups!)...

* not that I don't find other companies from the list like Apple or Google to be interesting, but maybe I just now view their "innovativeness" as a given.

#1: Team Obama - pretty self-explanatory.

#3: Hulu - interesting in that it's the first example I've seen of someone making a professional video site (as opposed to YouTube whose content is largely populated by amateurs) work.

#5 & #7: Cisco Systems & Pure Digital Technologies (maker of the Flip video recorder) - I find each company interesting by itself... with Cisco's foray into the consumer and technology for sporting venue (yea, I made up the category name) markets and Pure Digital making an incredibly cool product with it's ultra simple and small camcorders. Now with the announcement of Cisco acquiring Pure Digital... that takes things a step further.

#9: Amazon - Amazon as a company appears to be at the forefront of two terribly innovative (and different) businesses. One is Cloud Computing where they rent out server space to other companies looking to store data and use Amazon computing power... putting them in the league of other tech heavyweights like Google, IBM and HP doing this. The second is with their Kindle electronic book reader... which looks like the best option anyone has put out to date for reading books electronically. The only solid competitor I've seen in this area is actually Apple, which offers various apps enabling the reading of books on the iPhone (which I posted about here).

#12: Hewlett-Packard - Particularly interesting to me with HP's focus on design (highlighted by the new Mini 1000 netbook computer) and touchscreen technology (highlighted by the Touchsmart PC).

#20: Zappos - From personal experience, it's a great place to locate hard to find shoes and a company that offers outstanding customer support.

Well, that's it for companies from the Top 50. There was also mention of some interesting companies that didn't quite make the aforementioned list:

- Ausra: solar energy
- Netflix: well, derr...
- Participant Media: Jeff Skoll's movie production company
- Twitter: microblogging
- Meebo: instant messaging across multiple platforms
- Ning: custom social networking
- Yelp: user-submitted reviews of businesses

Cover Story on Cisco in Fast Company Magazine

Really interesting story in the recent Dec/Jan issue of Fast Company Magazine on Cisco Systems.

The piece by Ellen McGirt is titled "How Cisco's CEO John Chambers is Turning the Tech Giant Socialist" and details Chambers efforts to move decision-making in the company down from simply the top levels to a more collaborative approach. The advantages being both an increased speed to action and openness to new ideas. Interesting stuff from what sounds like an excellent work environment.

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Also from this issue of Fast Company were two smaller articles of interest. The first was Robert Scoble's column titled "Google's Push for Mobile Domination" about the company's mobile efforts. The impact of Google is of course widely known, but this would likely surprise many people.

Finally, there's a one-page piece titled "Next-gen Job Sites" that introduces four career sites people may not know of.