The World's Most Admired Companies How do you make the Most Admired list? Innovate, innovate, innovate. The winners on this year's list, compiled by the Hay Group consultancy, tell how they do it.
By Nicholas Stein
October 2, 2000
(FORTUNE Magazine) – ...
...No company illustrates the transformative power of innovation more dramatically than Enron. Over the past decade Enron's commitment to the invention--and later domination--of new business categories has taken it from a $200 million old-economy pipeline operator to a $40 billion new-economy trading powerhouse. In 1985, Enron recognized the opportunities wrought by natural gas deregulation and began to trade it like a commodity. Soon it was opening new markets trading electric power, pulp, paper--even broadband. Jeff Shenkman, the COO of Enron Global Markets, credits the company's culture for its success in building frontier markets. "Challenging conventional wisdom is something we push here," he says. "The way we do things today is different from how we will do it six months from now." For example, Louise Kitchen, a trader in Enron's London office, was able to attract a group of 350 people for a project to take the company's gas-trading operations online--before upper management even knew about it. Launched in November 1999, Enron Online has racked up $129 billion in transactions, making it one of the largest e-commerce sites in the world. "We didn't start it because the chairman said we needed an e-commerce strategy," says EVP Steve Kean. "The quality and strength of ideas are determined by how many employees support them--not by upper management. Good ideas are able to attract the resources they need to move forward freely." ...
FORTUNE's 100 Fastest-Growing Companies
By Reporter Associates Jane M. Folpe, Irene Gashurov, Ann Harrington, and Theodore Spencer
September 4, 2000
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Here they are, the speed racers of the economy...
...CHICO'S FAS 117% $18.8 37% $175.3 FORT MYERS, FLA. 17 87 27 CITRIX SYSTEMS 61% $116.9 89% $457.4 (5) FORT LAUDERDALE 53 16 28 MINIMED 71% $28.1 44% $252.1 (55) SYLMAR, CALIF. 44 69 29 ENRON 133% $1,109.0 46% $45,625.0 HOUSTON 13 67 30 POLYMEDICA 48% $15.1 69% $156.9 (19) WOBURN, MASS. 68 30 30 SUNRISE ASSISTED LIVING 124% $17.1 76% $280.6 MCLEAN, VA. 15 22 32 PINNACLE ENTERTAINMENT[*] 88% $61.8 78% $697.5 (91) GLENDALE, CALIF...
Oh, yeah, the charts....
