Indholdsfortegnelse for Spring Mar/Apr 2020 i Fast Company

This edition of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies may be our most diverse and surprising yet. Our signature list, featuring the top 50 businesses pushing boundaries today, includes an entertainment company in Seoul; an arts collective in Santa Fe, New Mexico; a Hong Kong–based mobile operating system; and a sustainable packaging company in Gilbert, Arizona. Add in our 44 targeted lists, which identify the year’s most innovative companies by industry and region, and this issue features 434 businesses from 39 countries that have inspired our editors with their inventiveness, impact, and relentless belief in their ideas. As varied as these lists may be, several themes have emerged, which reveal a lot about innovation in 2020. Consumer and enterprise demand for sustainable solutions has never been greater, and honorees such as…

Instagram @ABSTRACTSUNDAY Christoph Niemann is an artist who does work for The New Yorker. He takes dayto-day subjects and makes them into something clever. TV Show THE CROWN I like watching how the Windsor family continues to maintain their dynastic rule, funded by the public. Twitter @CHRISSYTEIGEN I struggle with Twitter and I’m not really a user, but when I need a little break I do always check in with Chrissy Teigen. Podcast EVERY LITTLE THING I love the episodes explaining why our body does weird things and the origins of random social behaviors. Slip Silk Sleep Mask ($50, SLIP.COM) “Using this mask helps me get into a meditative mindset, plus it’s so soft and I love how squishy it is.” —Tamara Mellon, founder and CEO, Tamara Mellon OFF SWITCH…

The fitness-guru streaming pioneer takes our career questionnaire. What is your best habit, and what is your worst? My best is being super consistent with my workouts, being present for my children, showing up for my family, making good food choices. My worst is being nonconfrontational. How do you unplug? I work hard until I know I totally deserve to truly unplug, so I can. What do you do when you’re creatively stuck? Deal with the roadblock. When I get stuck, it means I am not living truthfully in some way, so I face it and then the space opens up again. Is there a famous person you admire? Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Having that level of commitment to change any system or having a conversation with a culture before it…

I WAS TOLD EVAN SPIEGEL WAS REALLY SICK. THE 29-YEAR-OLD CEO OF SNAP, SNAPCHAT’S PARENT COMPANY, WAS BATTLING A COLD OF MYTHICAL PROPORTIONS. HIS VOICE, I WAS TOLD, WOULD BARELY REGISTER ABOVE A WHISPER. ¶ WE’D BE MEETING ON THE TOP FLOOR OF THE MAIN BUILDING OF SNAP’S SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA, HEADQUARTERS, THE ENTIRETY OF WHICH IS ACTUALLY SPIEGEL’S OFFICE—A QUIET, ALMOST CATHEDRAL-LIKE SPACE WITH WOOD-PANELED WALLS, VAULTED CEILINGS, AND LIBERAL AMOUNTS OF NATURAL LIGHT THAT STANDS IN CONTRAST WITH THE LOW-PARTITION-CUBICLE STYLING OF THE TWO FLOORS BELOW. This description will almost certainly be triggering for those who long ago concluded that they know who Spiegel is: the cocky L.A. rich kid turned imperial CEO—who famously turned down a $3 billion buyout offer from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2013…

As the market for hard seltzer spiked last year—up more than 200% with more than $1.2 billion in sales—memefriendly, millennialsavvy White Claw emerged as the life of the party. Launched by Mike’s Hard Lemonade manufacturer Mark Anthony Brands in 2016, it accounted for 54% of 2019 hard seltzer sales. While competitors focused on wooing female consumers with ultrafeminine touches (cans emblazoned with pink fruits and flirty mermaids), White Claw adopted a more neutral approach, including an elegant blackand-white logo, and marketing that showcases men and women hanging out together and proudly touting White Claw’s low-cal, low-carb, gluten-free credentials. That led to a near 50-50 gender split among customers. “The new generation doesn’t want to be told who to hang out with or how to act based on gender,” says Mark…

Canva’s graphic-design templates help people create everything from posters and invites to business cards and web ads. The company’s core product is the increasingly flexible slideshow-maker Presentations, which now lets users edit slide decks on mobile devices (and optimize them for small screens); embed them with video, maps, and social media posts; and share them via live URLs. “We want to give presentations the interactivity that people have come to expect online,” says Melanie Perkins, cofounder and CEO. A new enterprise tool, released in the fall, lets companies set their own templates (with controls for colors, fonts, and logos), helping to maintain brand identity across large workforces. Today, Canva has more than 1 million people using its paid products, and more than 1 million presentations are created each week.…

KaiOS is the most popular mobile operating system you probably haven’t heard of. Instead of designing software for full-blown smartphones, Hong Kong–based KaiOS Technologies (pronounced ky-O-S) has exceeded 150 million global users by powering what it calls the “smart feature phone.” Far more spartan than iPhones and Samsung Galaxy models, these devices—which sell for as little as $15—run must-have apps such as YouTube, Google Maps, Facebook, and Whats-App, with more available from the KaiOS app store. Kai-OS’s success in India (where it’s the No. 2 mobile platform after Android), Indonesia, Rwanda, and Nigeria has now piqued the interest of U.S. corporate giants. In 2019, Google participated in the company’s $50 million Series B round (adding to the $22 million it had already invested), and Disney struck a deal to bring…

In a country where e-commerce remains relatively nascent (despite more than 450 million internet users) and delivery logistics imposingly difficult, Bengaluru, India–based social commerce platform Meesho has managed to turn more than 2 million people into digital shopkeepers. The app lets users build curated online stores by selecting merchandise from more than 21,000 small and medium suppliers, which offer apparel, jewelry, and new product categories like home and kitchen. Users can then market these goods to their personal networks through Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. (Meesho takes a 10% to 20% sales commission.) Many of Meesho’s resellers are homemakers in India who use the app to achieve financial freedom without leaving the house. These budding entrepreneurs “do not have the capital to purchase raw materials to get [a boutique] off the…

In just two and a half years since its launch, Luckin Coffee has become the largest coffee chain in China, surpassing Starbucks, which took more than two decades to achieve that status. Data informs virtually every decision Luckin makes, from store placement to pricing to supply forecasting. When Luckin enters a new market (it’s currently in 53 Chinese cities), it opens 5 to 10 “relax” stores—casual, sit-down coffee shops—and centralized kitchens from which it serves delivery orders. It entices people to download the Luckin app—users can only pay digitally—with a free cup of coffee. The company then decides where to open pickup kiosks based on customers’ location data. Once Luckin has blanketed a market, it shuts down delivery—because the economics don’t make sense for a product that sells for about…

The fast-casual salad chain opened only 11 freestanding restaurants in 2019 (for a total of 102 nationwide), but it has grown nonetheless, thanks to the lunch-pickup stations it has established in nearly 1,000 locations in 9 cities. The company’s 18-month-old Outpost program, which offers free delivery at set times to select buildings, has allowed Sweetgreen to build its capabilities without having to wrestle with one-to-one delivery. It also helps the chain gain new customers, via the employers and landlords who offer the service to office workers and residents. Outpost has more than 100,000 users, roughly a third of whom were new to Sweetgreen, and it’s poised to reach nearly 3,000 more locations this year. Says cofounder and CEO Jonathan Neman: “Outpost is a Trojan horse for us.”…

Once a YouTube also-ran, Vimeo is now a content-creation facilitator that distributes videos on the web, social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Linked-In), connected TVs (Apple TV, Roku), and—yes—even YouTube. “Your audience is everywhere,” says CEO Anjali Sud, “so your video content should be everywhere.” In 2019, Vimeo launched Showcase, a $20-a-month tool helping users create customized video-viewing experiences, and Vimeo Enterprise, with analytics, live-streaming, and marketing functions. Vimeo has more than 1.2 million paying subscribers and surpassed $50 million in quarterly revenue in the third quarter of 2019.…

Known for creating a flight-booking tool that leverages AI to predict airfares and alert travelers to price drops, Hopper developed into a customer-centric travel marketplace this past year. Its hotel-booking tool, which mines partner apps and websites for the best room rates, expanded to cover more than 620,000 properties across 2,500 cities; it also alerts users when it unlocks a room rate that can be bundled for a lower price with an airfare or finds a hotel for a better rate. The company also launched Price Freeze for flights, in November, which lets users place a small deposit (refundable if they wind up booking) to hold an airfare before deciding to commit. “People are buying 30% more airfare because we’ve removed the anxiety,” says CEO Frederic Lalonde. The company also…

If your literary tastes run toward lesbian hockey romances, zombie shark mysteries, or futuristic werewolf dramas, Wattpad has a title for you. The digital platform directs its 80 million monthly readers to stories from its 4 million self-published authors with help from machine learning, which categorizes all this content. The company tapped these insights last year to launch the Wattpad Books imprint and publish its first print titles, including teen drama I’m a Gay Wizard and Afrofuturist romance Given. Cofounder and CEO Allen Lau credits Wattpad readers with helping to surface “stories that you wouldn’t see in traditional systems.” A similar approach powers Wattpad Studios, the company’s film and television arm, which produced After, one of 2019’s highest-grossing indie films. It has about 40 more projects in development.…

The Calm app was downloaded 60 million times last year, with two new users joining almost every second. Despite this rapid growth, the company is staying Zen. After noticing in 2016 that many customers were listening to Calm in order to fall asleep, the company launched Sleep Stories: soporific bedtime tales for adults read by the likes of actors Matthew McConaughey and Stephen Fry and singer Leona Lewis. The feature has become so popular (last year it had more than 180 million listens from its 2 million subscribers, who pay $70 a year) that Calm expanded further into the $4.2 trillion global wellness industry, with self-improvement classes, stretching routines, and relaxing music. “We want to cover all aspects of mental fitness,” says cofounder and co-CEO Michael Acton Smith. In December,…

When WeWork CEO Adam Neumann was forced to resign last year, he sold around $1 billion worth of his stock on his way out the door. Many of Neumann’s employees, in contrast, have seen the value of their WeWork options go up in smoke. In the murky world of private-market ownership, startup employees sign up for hard work and a shot at IPO glory but often wind up empty-handed. Why can’t large private companies share the wealth and behave more like public ones? Enter Carta. Founded in 2012 and today valued at $1.7 billion, it helps more than 13,000 private companies manage their cap tables—records of the securities a company has issued, who owns them, and how much they’re worth—providing rank-and-file employees transparency and leverage in a system historically prone…

1. The SoluBlue Cup This bioplastic container is made entirely of materials derived from plants and degrades in weeks, on land or in water, with no hazardous traces. It’s designed for cold beverages and can be discarded in food streams and used for compost. 2. CupClub Plastic cups are returned to bins located in participating London cafés for cleaning and reuse (up to 132 times). It’s a cost-neutral solution for coffee shops that could help reduce the estimated 250 billion cups that wind up in landfills each year. 3. Colombier Paper Cup Most paper cups include a thin plastic coating that makes them difficult to recycle. The Colombier cup uses a water-based, nonplastic coating that is compostable while remaining resistant to heat, oil, and grease, making it easily recyclable.…

In October 2019, Vertex Pharmaceuticals received FDA approval for Trikafta, a cystic fibrosis treatment that could help 90% of patients with the deadly genetic disorder. Cystic fibrosis, which affects about 30,000 people in the U.S. (and has a life expectancy of 44 years for patients born today), is caused by mutations in the CFTR gene that lead to a defective protein being produced. That protein doesn’t allow chloride to flow in and out of cells normally (particularly those that line the lungs) and prevents water from hydrating the cellular surface, leading to a buildup of thick mucus and difficulty breathing. While other researchers looked to use gene therapy to address the disorder, Vertex’s team created a small molecule drug that can tweak the faulty protein, allowing it to function more…

Everyone’s an expert in something—hypnobirthing, Chinese metaphysics, you name it. But making money off this knowledge can be a different story. Online education platform Teachable allows subject experts to offer video courses to paying audiences. The company helps instructors, who often already have sizable social media and YouTube followings, set up digital storefronts for their videos, while handling payments and other logistics. “In the past, creators could buy their own domain name and set up a system to process payments,” says founder and CEO Ankur Nagpal. “We take care of that now, so creators can make a video and have a course set up within an hour.” While the average course price hovers around $160, Teachable lets creators offer premium add-on services, such as private video calls and coaching sessions,…

Advertising 1. Wieden+Kennedy For sending Bud Light to Westeros and dreaming further for Nike at the Women’s World Cup 2. McCann World-group For changing the game for over-looked communities 3. BBDO For partnering with Monica Lewinsky to tackle toxic online behavior and cyberbullying 4. Giant Spoon For putting depression treatment to music 5. Observatory For befriending pets for Refinery29 6. Anomaly For spurring action on the Grenfell fire in London by shaming Parliament with projection ads 7. VMLY&R For buying Poland’s oldest porn mag and devoting its last issue to female empowerment 8. The&Partnership For going long for Lexus in a 60,000-hour doc 9. TBWA Worldwide For making the city bounce for Apple AirPods 10. Droga5 For telling the truth about The New York Times Africa 1. Twiga Foods For…

Qwatasia has a full-time job as a fraud analyst in Dallas, where she works the third shift—5 p.m. to 2 a.m.—Monday through Friday. But she finds it difficult to live on her salary. Sometimes, she’s short on rent as she waits for her next paycheck to hit. Qwatasia got a flat tire a few months ago. In the past, she might have put the $187 she needed to fix it on a credit card reserved for emergencies. But this time, she had another option: a cash advance from Dave, a banking app developed by a Silicon Valley startup that endears itself to users with help from its cartoon mascot, a bespectacled bear. “Dave helped me out, because I could set a date when I would pay him back,” Qwatasia tells…

01 Waking Up FROZEN’S “LET IT GO” OR “WHAT’S UP DANGER,” BLACK-WAY, BLACK CAVIAR My son loves both: We play them in the morning while we brush our teeth, get dressed, and dance. 02 Driving “HYPNOTIZE,” THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. My driver’s license lapsed over 10 years ago, but when I drove, I loved listening to ’90s hip-hop. 03 Working Out “MORNI BANKE,” GURU RANDHAWA Bollywood music gets me hyped, so it’s my go-to for working out, especially when I am doing sprints. 04 Hard at Work “FORMATION,” BEYONCÉ No one works harder than Queen B. 05 Psyching Up “DANCING ON MY OWN,” ROBYN My theme song. It makes me feel amazingly brave. 06 Mellowing Out “ALL OF ME,” JOHN LEGEND This song instantly puts me at ease no matter what else is going on in my…

01 The Black Jacobins C.L.R. JAMES The 1937 classic book on the Haitian Revolution provides an incredible story of leadership and how to change a culture. 02 Writing My Wrongs SHAKA SENGHOR The memoir of a man who went to prison for 19 years, then became an author and MIT fellow. 03 Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror VICTOR SEBESTYEN A thrilling biography that provides great insight into how Communism works in practice. 04 Skin in the Game NICHOLAS NASSIM TALEB A book about the dynamics of how large-scale, highly random systems behave. 05 Made in Harlem: A Memoir DANIEL R. DAY An amazing entrepreneurial story covering everything from dice to fashion. RETREAT AND ADVANCE Cap Ferret “Not to be confused with the showier Cap Ferrat on the Côte D’Azur, Cap…

Original Series First Move Eighteen shows have debuted since fall 2018—a mix of fiction and reality—all targeting Snap’s addesirable 13-to-24-year-old audience. Breakout Hit The Dead Girls Detective Agency (1), about a group of ghosts solving murder mysteries, is on its fourth season. What’s Next New series are in the works that will invite viewers to play along with the activity in the show in order to keep watching. Crowdsourced Series First Move Snapchat introduced Our Story in 2014 to collate videos people share from events such as music festivals. It’s grown to include shows such as 10-Second Talents. Breakout Hit Best of College (2) offers a revealing peek at campus life, a compilation of the geofenced versions that Snap offers students at specific campuses. What’s Next Snap is opening international offices in key markets…

Seoul’s Olympic Stadium was packed during pop band BTS’s three soldout shows last October, but some fans bypassed long merch lines by preordering items via the e-commerce app Weply, which offers exclusive band-related products. Others checked wait times for food kiosks and posted messages to BTS members through the social networking app Weverse. These services weren’t built by tech startups, but by a subsidiary of Big Hit Entertainment, the Seoul-based music management and production company that represents BTS and other artists. Launched last June, the apps are part of Big Hit’s plan to build a “one-stop service within the music industry,” says co-CEO Lenzo Yoon, akin to the transactional “super apps” popular in parts of Asia. Weply now boasts 1.8 million users from 200 countries; Weverse has 1.4 million daily…

Every month, over 100 million global active users spend more than 1 billion hours on Roblox, an online gaming platform where users can play games such as Jailbreak and MeepCity, and develop their own. For cofounder and CEO David Baszucki, it’s all about“allowing the content to take center stage.” This past year, the company introduced tools for its 2 million–plus developers, such as a translation feature that lets them publish game titles in multiple languages and an upgrade that allows up to 800 people per server to play simultaneously. Creators, who earned some $100 million in revenue in 2019 (up from $70 million the year before), make money selling virtual goods and other in-game upgrades. “We’re the toolmakers,” Baszucki says. “Our developers are the real creative geniuses.”…

As interest in plant-based meats surges, Beyond Meat is leading the way, expanding to 67,000 restaurant locations globally, including more than 9,000 Dunkin’s, which began serving Beyond Breakfast Sausage in November. Beyond also launched tests of a meatball sub with Subway, fried chicken with KFC, and a “PLT” burger with McDonald’s—meaning it now works with three of the five largest fastfood chains in the world. “We ask these global chains what they want, and then we create different product lines from our platform,” says CEO Ethan Brown. In retail, the company upgraded its flagship Beyond Burger, adding cocoa butter “marbling” to mimic beef fat. The company’s growth rate is 253%, and last fall it reported its first quarterly profit, on revenue of $92 million.…

With the acquisitions of Gimlet Media (producer of Homecoming), Anchor (a popular creation app), and The Ringer (Bill Simmons’s website), Spotify is turning its data analytics prowess toward podcasting. “We’re bringing more discovery-focused offerings to help artists find new fans,” says chief content officer Dawn Ostroff. The new Your Daily Drive playlist offers listeners a personalized mix of music, news, and podcasts. Spotify is introducing microcasts and in January launched a tool that inserts ads based on a listener’s gender, age, and device type.…

After receiving FDA approval for the Ebola vaccine Ervebo in 2019, Merck is poised to eradicate the deadly virus. The process began six years ago, when Merck licensed the treatment from New Link Genetics and set to work developing it and“showing that it was generally safe and effective,” says Roger Perlmutter, president of Merck Research Laboratories. Merck figured out how to scale manufacturing of the inoculation, which consists of a genetically engineered live virus that triggers an immune response, and delivered more than 250,000 doses to the Democratic Republic of Congo (site of the most recent outbreak). It reduced mortality by at least 88% among people exposed to the virus.…

For the 400,000 women who suffer from postpartum depression (PPD) each year, treatment has been limited to psychotherapy and antidepressants that can take weeks to begin working. In March, Sage Therapeutics received FDA approval for Zulresso, the first specific treatment for PPD. Administered via an IV over 60 hours, Zulresso takes effect almost immediately. (The FDA doesn’t list any risks for infants, but Sage recommends patients consult a doctor before breastfeeding.) While traditional antidepressants are based on the idea that the underlying problem is depleted levels of neurotransmitters (such as dopamine), Zulresso—Sage’s first approved therapy—targets the brain’s neuroreceptors. “It’s almost like resetting the nervous system,” says CEO Jeff Jonas. The company is applying the same approach to other conditions; Sage 217, an oral drug for major depressive disorder, won breakthrough…

For decades, Americans have had an insatiable appetite for new cloth ing, spurred on by the fast-fashion industry, which cranked out cheap, disposable garments that helped global clothing production double from 50 billion items a year in 2000 to more than 100 billion today. (There are only 7.8 billion humans on the planet.) The environmental toll of this is steep: Apparel producers consume 108 million tons of nonrenewable resources every year and emit 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gases, more than all international flights and maritime shipping trips combined. Meanwhile, a truckload of clothes is either sent to the landfill or incinerated every second. But the tide is turning: Between 2017 and 2019, the number of items in American women’s closets dropped for the first time, from 164 to 136—a…

Last year’s Netflix miniseries When They See Us wasn’t simply a dramatization of the Central Park Five trial. It was a rallying cry to transform the criminal justice system by looking more closely at the district attorneys who prosecute people of color for political gain. Civil rights organization Color of Change teamed up with director Ava DuVernay to steer viewers to the nonprofit’s Winning Justice project, which encourages voters to “reimagine what a prosecutor could look like,” says Color of Change VP and chief of campaigns Arisha Hatch. The initiative, which includes an online database with info on more than 2,400 prosecutors across the country, provides voters with tools and resources to pressure DAs to eliminate cash bail for nonviolent offenses, for example, and end prosecution for petty drug crimes—or…

One of the paradoxes of our high-tech world is the humble cardboard box. Most end their life being dutifully placed in the recycling bin. But savvy mass-market brands (Apple, Target, Beats head-phones) have turned the boxes that contain their products into objects of desire and fascination in their own right by investing in package design, thereby reinforcing their brands along the way. You don’t have to be a corporate behemoth to achieve this effect, however. Case in point: Thelma’s Treats, a bakery that delivers warm, fresh-baked cookies in Des Moines, Iowa. When Dereck Lewis founded the business in 2012, he didn’t have a big marketing budget. So he decided to invest in a memorable packaging experience. “We were brainstorming, and we said, ‘What would be the most logical shape for…

Launched in September 2019, Apple Arcade is one of the freshest ideas in apps since the App Store debuted in 2008. The service offers unlimited access to more than 100 games for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, all blissfully devoid of ads and in-app purchases. For consumers, that’s a remarkable value at $5 a month; for Apple, it’s a new way to monetize the 1.5 billion active devices it has sold. Arcade’s excellence is the latest sign of how adept the company has become at services, a powerful growth business that hit a record $12.5 billion in revenue in the last quarter of 2019.…

Maven Clinic, a telemedicine network focused on women’s health that is offered as an employee benefit at organizations including L’Oréal, BuzzFeed, and Snap (No. 1), more than tripled the number of companies it serves in 2019. Maven connects workers with obgyns, nutritionists, lactation consultants, and other specialists via video chat or messaging for a fraction of the cost of an in-person visit. It was founded on the idea that access to better care before, during, and after pregnancies benefits employers as much as patients (by requiring fewer sick days and, ultimately, keeping parents in jobs). “Millennials are overtaking the workforce, and they have different expectations of what their employer does for them,” says founder and CEO Kate Ryder. In addition to coordinating pregnancy care and services that help women get…

“We make it as easy as possible to be a sports fan,” says Howard Mittman, CEO of Bleacher Report, the Gen Z– and millennial-friendly sports media brand—78% of its audience is under 35—owned by WarnerMedia. Sports in the social media era have become as much about the off-court soap operas as who scored 35 points last night, and Bleacher Report continues to adapt, adding coverage of sneaker and betting cultures and beefing up its app to pull in all the feeds a fan needs to get news and shareable clips. The goal is to build more communities like the breakout House of Highlights, which grew in 2019 from an Instagram-only NBA-centric account into a full-fledged brand, with 18 YouTube series, a strong presence on TikTok (where it has attracted 2.3…

Healthy.io leverages computer vision to turn smartphone cameras into diagnostics tools. Its app-based chronic kidney disease test, which analyzes users’ uploaded photos of urinalysis dipsticks, received FDA clearance last fall for clinical use in the U.S. (Healthy.io is now seeking approval for home use) and is rolling out in the U.K. and Europe. Its over-the-counter urinary tract infection kits are sold in Boots pharmacies in the U.K. and will enter the States soon. A new wound-care tool, launched in January, is poised to help caregivers monitor patients remotely. “Medical practitioners still need to be involved,” says CEO Yonatan Adiri. “We’re designing products that match the speed of life.”…

A 5G quiz 1. Where do you live? [A] In a major metro area [B] At least 30 minutes from the nearest stoplight [C] In my mom’s basement 2. Which of the following connected devices do you own? [A] An Echo Dot [B] A Google Nest [C] A rotary phone with EarthLink dial-up 3. Which of the following do you subscribe to? [A] Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, or similar streaming entertainment service [B] Ring home security system [C] The basic tenets of neo-Luddism 4. How would you rate the monthly fees you pay your local ISP? [A] Outrageous [B] Hey, the triple play’s actually a pretty sweet deal [C] I cut cable and get three local channels with 7 cents’ worth of aluminum foil 5. What did you think of…

A three-dimensional homage to Dutch artist Piet Mondrian’s simple and iconic geometric canvases, the Mondri vase can be flipped and turned to hold flowers in three different ways and accommodate various plant sizes. The minimalist vessel’s colorful, translucent acrylic panels, crafted by Danish designer Frank Kerdil, lend a striking abstract air to the organic elements they contain. ($100, store.moma.org)…

The first thing you see when you walk into Omaze is a wall of employees’ childhood photos. The photos act as a reminder to employees of the Los Angeles-based company, which raises money for charity by offering chances to win once-in-a-lifetime experiences. “When you’re a kid, you use your imagination to think about what’s possible, to dream big without limits,” explains co-founder and CEO Matt Pohlson. “The photos remind us all to bring our inner child to work every day.” “Dream the world better” is the core of the Omaze vision. The company brings that vision to life in two ways. First, it does so through the chance to win incredible experiences, like a walk-on role in Star Wars or Pope Francis handing over the keys to a brand-new Lamborghini,…

It’s 2020, and we don’t have flying cars (yet), but think about the cool things that we do have: Augmented reality that brings joy into the daily lives of more than 163 million people. Drones that deliver vital medicine. An effective treatment for postpartum depression. Creative ways to curb society’s addiction to new clothing and single-use plastic. Platforms that allow fiction writers and video producers to get paid. And all the hard seltzer we can drink. Read on to see how these and dozens more inspiring accomplishments are driving this year’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies. Plus, the 44 Top 10 most innovative firms, by sector and region.…

Microsoft’s messaging platform, known as Teams, became the top workplace messaging app in 2019—beating out competitor Slack—when it crossed more than 13 million daily users in July. By January, it surpassed 20 million, with 91 of the U.S.’s 100 largest companies using it. The increasingly flexible software seamlessly integrates chat, calls, file sharing, video meetings, and third-party apps to allow employees to engage in a nonlinear workflow. “People are asking for a way to have a critical mass of capabilities together,” says Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365, the company’s cloud-based productivity suite. Teams facilitates document editing within the app, for example, rather than requiring people to toggle between multiple tools or windows. (Plus, you can do this while hosting a conference call—and sending Beyoncé GIFs to your…

When Capital One discovered a data breach in July 2019 that exposed credit card and application data of more than 100 million people, the revelation came courtesy of a hacker—a benevolent one. He was working on behalf of HackerOne, a company that connects businesses and government agencies with a network of 600,000 hackers who test systems in exchange for payment and clout. While traditional cybersecurity efforts are centered around building hacker-proof software, CEO Mårten Mickos says vulnerabilities are inevitable: “It’s better to know than not to know.” Last year, the company (which has doled out more than $80 million in rewards to cybersleuths since 2012, about half of that in the past year) introduced HackerOne Clear, a program that vets hackers for sensitive projects and allows companies to require nondisclosure…

Allbirds The shoe startup has used Shopify’s website translation and currency conversion services to handle transactions as it has expanded internationally. Brooklinen The bedding startup’s founders credit Shopify with helping create a sleek online store that highlights the brand’s lifestyle credentials. Budweiser AB InBev tapped Shopify to power its Budweiser gift shop, allowing it to sell socks, Christmas ornaments, belt buckles, and barstools to beer lovers. LeSportsac After the accessories brand started using Shopify’s AI tools to target customers with personalized recommendations, it saw a 7% rise in conversions.…

After Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? debuted, in March 2019, hordes of Gen Z fans purchased hoodies, shorts, and shoelaces that came with a digital album, boosting the album’s sales and helping it top the Billboard Hot 200 list. (This so-called bundling has become so ubiquitous that Billboard recently changed how it records these sales.) But Matt Vlasic, CEO of Bravado, the merchandising division of Universal Music Group that works with Eilish and dozens of other artists, including Justin Bieber and Black-pink, sees these souvenirs as more than just a means to boost album sales. “In the past, people bought CDs or vinyl,” he says. “We want to provide something physical that they can hold onto.” To give fans that tangible connection, Bravado designs,…

Female protagonists are proliferating across big and small screens, in shows such as the forth coming Daisy Jones & the Six, a 13-episode series for Amazon, and films like the upcoming Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Legally Blonde 3. These projects are all courtesy of Reese Witherspoon’s four-year-old media company, Hello Sunshine, which has become a uniquely powerful engine for women’s perspectives in the entertainment world. (Hello Sunshine also produced Big Little Lies for HBO and The Morning Show for Apple TV Plus last year.) The company places an emphasis on books: The titles Witherspoon selects for her affiliated book club, which grew to 1.2 million followers in 2019, are often the basis of film or TV projects that the company produces or she appears in herself. For example,…

Known for developing a biocoating for seeds that reduces the need for environmentally taxing fertilizers, agtech startup Indigo is on a mission to entice the world’s farmers to shift to more sustainable growing techniques. In June 2019, the company launched the Terraton Initiative, a marketplace that connects farmers willing to embrace regenerative agriculture—including such techniques as no-till farming, using cover crops, and spreading less fertilizer—with companies that want to pay for carbon offsets. “Once we started working out the potential of agricultural soil to store atmospheric carbon and realized that it could have a meaningful impact on climate change, it felt like our obligation to launch it,” says CEO David Perry. Indigo is partnering with the nonprofit Soil Health Institute to study how much carbon each farm captures over time,…

Big companies often maintain huge troves of customer data, and small mistakes can jeopardize privacy and legal compliance. Immuta builds software to help businesses govern, share, and work with data while adhering to privacy laws, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. “The core value of our platform is to protect the data and then unlock it when employees need it, without having to have everyone meet in the boardroom,” says cofounder and CEO Matthew Carroll. The software determines who can access what information for what purpose—allowing doctors to retrieve patient records during a drug trial, for example, but hiding identifying data from drug companies when they study the aggregated results. When laws and regulations are passed (such as the 2018 California Consumer Privacy Act), Immuta updates its software…

Launched in 2014 to help urban retailers source produce such as bananas and tomatoes from small-scale Kenyan farmers, Twiga spent 2019 expanding its mobile ordering platform to encompass nonperishable goods and developing its delivery capabilities. It also integrated a fintech product that offers vendors credit to build out their businesses. “We want to be a one-stop shop for informal retail,” says cofounder and CEO Peter Njonjo. Twiga, which saw revenues grow by around 500% last year, serves about 5,000 outlets daily in Kenya and works with more than 13,000 farmers. The company raised over $30 million last year from backers, including Goldman Sachs and the International Finance Corporation, which it will use to expand throughout Kenya—and likely beyond—this year.…

The 21-year-old nonprofit best known for its bold anti-smoking ads is rising to meet the vaping crisis. Truth Initiative’s “Tested on Humans” campaign last summer (in which anthropomorphized animals expressed concern that humans are being used as guinea pigs to test the effects of vaping) generated more than 367 million video views. The organization is finding success with more interactive efforts as well. Its free, text-based “This is Quitting” program, which launched in early 2019, allows users (who sign up simply by texting “DITCHJUUL” to 88709) to receive daily texts with tips tailored to their age and the particular device they’re trying to break up with. According to data published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, more than 60% of program participants report having decreased e-cigarette usage within two weeks, and…

Thanks to the pervasiveness of AI, the power required for tasks such as natural language comprehension is pushing conventional processors to their limits. Graphcore is a Bristol, England–based startup producing an Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) chip that’s optimized for industrial-strength machine-learning jobs. “We’re focused on helping people do things they’ve been struggling to do with existing hardware,” says cofounder and CEO Nigel Toon. For instance, one calculation used for algorithmic trading and other financial applications runs in 4.5 minutes on an IPU versus 2 hours with traditional hardware. In 2019, Dell began shipping the first IPU-based servers. And Microsoft rolled out an IPU cloud-computing service—giving companies on-demand access to Graphcore’s technology.…

Omaze is an online global sweepstakes platform that puts together coveted experiences (lunch with Amal and George Clooney in Lake Como) and prizes (a Lamborghini signed by the Pope) to raise money for everything from Unicef to local homeless organizations. Since its 2012 launch, the for-profit Omaze, which takes a percentage of the overall sweepstakes donations, has raised over $130 million for more than 350 charities. The company had been exclusively focused on celebrity-driven prizes until its giveaway of a $233,000 McLaren brought in a surprising $1.9 million for the Movember Foundation in 2018. Omaze is now intent on creating packages that marry a high-demand item (a Sprinter Van) with a cause that resonates among entrants (conservation organization Access Fund). Omaze’s 34-person marketing team produces videos to showcase the charity…