The Most Innovative Companies
Fast Company magazine recently released its listing of the most innovative companies. And while you’ll find many of the usual suspects there (hello Google, er I mean Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Uber) there are some surprises worth noting.
Slack is the communication platform created only three years ago by Canadian Stewart Butterfield, who was previously best known as one of the cofounders of Flickr. It’s been a rocket ship startup and comes in at number 26 on the list.
“In April 2015, Slack had 750,000 users. By the end of the year, it had close to 2 million and was valued at $2.8 billion,” notes Fast Company. “It makes company communication not just easy, but fun. Its elegantly designed chat rooms and intuitive interface allow for instant team communication, essentially eliminating the need for email chains. The app is even being hailed by some as the death of email at work.”
Canadian tech star Shopify, which was recently hiring in New Brunswick, makes the list at number 47. Fast Company writes that, “Shopify realized that three major social hubs–Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest–were missing out on a big retail opportunity. If store owners poured resources into crafting their social profiles, why not enable followers to buy items they coveted with a few taps of a button?”
Now the company has more than 200,000 customers around the world.
Clickbait behemoth Buzzfeed takes top spot in the list, no surprise given the massive audience its web sites are earning each day. But others choices are more surprising, including the Black Lives Matter movement: “The hashtag jumped off Twitter timelines and blossomed into a full-fledged, decentralized movement ‘IRL’ that moves experienced and new activists to seek justice in the face of issues that negatively impact black people in their communities,” the magazine writes.
You can read the full list on the Fast Company site.