Apple #2? Ping!
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Posted on 02/14/2015 11:03:12 PM PST by Swordmaker
Apple is the second most innovative company in the world, according Fast Company's 2015 rankings. Apple was #14 in the Fast Company's 2014 rankings, while Google placed first.
Fast Company attributes Apple's success in 2014 to its different software refinements that make its existing hardware more powerful. Both iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite brought many features to both developers and consumers.
It’s too early to judge the long-term impact of all these features, given that they depend on what other companies do with them. Still, they’re evidence that Tim Cook’s Apple is developing its own character—one deeply influenced by Steve Jobs, but not slavishly so. Jobs, after all, was fond of boasting that Apple was the only outfit in the tech industry that was solely responsible for "the whole widget"—hardware, software, and services, all integrated into a seamless experience. With iOS 8, Apple is loosening its control over future widgets in ways that its control-freak cofounder might have rejected. But they’re putting Apple even more boldly at the center of "the whole widget" of our technology-powered lives.
Fast Company named Warby Parker, the online eyeglasses website, the most innovative company in their 2015 rankings.
The top 10 rankings include:
1. Warby Parker
2. Apple
3. Alibaba
4. Google
5. Instagram
6. Color of Change
7. HBO
8. Virgin America
9. IndiGo
10. Slack
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Luxottica (Sears Optical, Pearle, LensCrafters, EyeMed, Target Optical, Rayban, etc.) has been doing that here and in the rest of the world for decades through OneSight:
EYEGLASSES? Innovation? Somebody got paid off big time. What a joke!
But they are glasses for hipsters. And social justice. Are you against social justice? </s>
how very nice for warby parker.....that certainly does not make them innovative in any sense of the word
Yes, questionable. There's a news article out about binocular contact lenses, controlled by blinking either left or right eye. Now that's innovative. There are companies 3D printing human organs, that's innovative. A lot of other choices that may have been overlooked.
Eyeglasses are so yesterday. Here is a description of the binocular contact lenses I mentioned, that is innovative:
A recently prototyped contact lens with optional zoom is currently under development with near-term applications for military ground troops who will have on-the-fly ability to switch from regular corrected (or uncorrected) vision to a zoom-view. In regular mode, the wearer will enjoy a 120-degree field-of-view at 20/20 clarity and with a blink of the eye switch to 3.5x optical zoom with a 12-degree field of view. A 10x optical zoom is also available with a supplementing eyeglass system currently in development.
http://techtransfer.universityofcalifornia.edu/NCD/21420.html
Or perhaps the femtosecond laser system of eye surgery:
The Byers Eye Institute at Stanford Health Care is the first academic medical center on the West Coast to offer Laser-Assisted Cataract Surgery using the Catalys® femtosecond laser.
With technology developed here in Silicon Valley at Optimedica, a medical technology company with its roots based at Stanford, ophthalmologists at the Byers Eye Institute can now use laser technology to assist in the surgical treatment of cataracts, offering unmatched precision, control and safety during this outpatient procedure.
This specialized surgery is used to treat patients with cataracts and astigmatism resulting in improved vision, decreased dependence on eyeglasses, faster recovery and less discomfort.
I would have thought that Apple would rank above Warby Parker but that’s okay ... I know how innovative Apple has been over the years and how good and useful their products are!
Not that Warby Parker is not a success story - in five years they've captured about 30% of the eyeglass market - but it's quite a stretch to say they are the most innovative company in the U.S.
Also, glad to see that Buddy Holly glasses are back in style.
I wonder if Lockheed is doing anything innovative? Or Bell Lab?
One good standard for innovation is winning an “R&D 100” award for innovation I don’t find Warby Parler on the list. They were probably too busy innovating and forgot to apply.
http://www.rdmag.com/award-winners/2014/08/2014-r-d-100-award-winners
Lockheed-Martin is giving us fusion power Real Soon Now - and you think glasses are innovative???
* guffaw *
Bell Labs became Lucent years ago, and refocused from pure research to product development. For all its downsides, monopoly does give a company tons of resources to pour into R&D projects with no clear roadmap to profitability — see also IBM, Xerox.
Color of Change? Sounds Marxist.
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