Social outranks search in FastCompany's 50 Most Innovative Companies

Yandex and Google are the two only ‘search’ related companies in the 2011 version of Fast Company’s list of 50 Most Innovative Companies. Search related companies are being outrun by their social rivals. Both Twitter and Facebook are above Google, but even these have to let Apple lead the way. On the list other social tools like Foursquare and Linkedin also take a prominent place.

The list, which is a yearly returning event, is an indication of how the different companies are being looked at when it comes to being innovative. It shows the trend of looking at Social but it also looks at more than just the web, making it an interesting list with names like Nissan (number 4) and Epocrates (number 10) as remarkable high scoring companies.

Last year the list was lead by Facebook who now has dropped to spot number three, being surpassed by Apple (from three to one) and surprisingly enough Twitter, which leaped from 50 to number two.

Google, which last year sat on spot number four, dropped two to number six. They must be looking with a strange feeling to the company just above them on number five. As a new entry Groupon outranks the company which tried to buy them for $ 6 billion dollars not so long ago and was turned down.

At number 26 we find the second search engine. Not Bing, not Blekko, but Yandex is regarded as one of the most innovative companies in the world.

The jury-reports for both search engines are good. Google gets granted for their original product: search. The number six spot is “For instantly upgrading the search experience“.

Yandex gets credit for their growth and market share: “One of the few search engines to fend off Google, Yandex holds a 65% share of Russian search. It ousted Google as Firefox’s default search engine in Russia and launched an English-language service last May, winning praise for its results’ neatness.”

The list

The entire list (order: rank, company, ranking last year):

01 APPLE (3)
02 TWITTER (-)
03 FACEBOOK (1)
04 NISSAN (-)
05 GROUPON (-)
06 GOOGLE (4)
07 DAWNING INFORMATION INDUSTRY (-)
08 NETFLIX (12)
09 ZYNGA (-)
10 EPOCRATES (-)
11 TRADER JOE’S (-)
12 ARM (-)
13 BURBERRY (-)
14 KOSAKA SMELTING AND REFINING (-)
15 FOURSQUARE (-)
16 ESPN (-)
17 TURNER SPORTS (-)
18 HUAWEI (5)
19 INTEL (14)
20 SYNCARDIA (-)
21 DONORSCHOOSE.ORG (-)
22 EBAY (-)
23 NIKE (13)
24 LINKEDIN (-)
25 WIEDEN + KENNEDY (-)
26 YANDEX (-)
27 AMAZON (2)
28 OPENING CEREMONY (-)
29 IBM (18)
30 AMYRIS (-)
31 DOUBLE NEGATIVE (-)
32 KASPERSKY LAB (-)
33 PEPSICO (-)
34 UNIVISION (-)
35 SNOHETTA (-)
36 MARKS & SPENCER (-)
37 MICROSOFT (48)
38 SOLARCITY (-)
39 SHAADI.COM (-)
40 VOXIVA (-)
41 CISCO (17)
42 ENERKEM (-)
43 SAMSUNG (36)
44 PANDORA (-)
45 GE (19)
46 CHANGCHUN DACHENG INDUSTRIAL GROUP (-)
47 AZUL (-)
48 STAMEN DESIGN (-)
49 FX (-)
50 MADECASSE (-)

Descriptions of the companies can be found on the Fast Company website.

Bas van den Beld

Bas van den Beld is a speaker, trainer and online marketing strategist. Bas is the owner of Stateofsearch.com. -- You can hire Bas to speak, train or consult. -- More articles and bio from Bas van den Beld