Five Indian companies make the cut to Forbes innovative list

Five Indian companies including Larsen & Toubro, Hindustan Unilever and Infosys rank among Forbes magazine's list of "The World's Most Innovative Companies" topped by four US companies.

Larsen & Toubro with an annual sales growth of 19 per cent ranks ninth in the world followed by Hindustan Unilever (12) with 11.4 per cent. Infosys (19) comes third with 12.7 per cent growth as per the US business magazine which factors a parameter called lower "innovation premium," measuring the difference between the value of the company's existing businesses and its expected future innovations.

Companies must also have $10 billion in market capitalisation with a R&D spend at least 1 per cent of their asset base.

Tata Consultancy Services (29) with 19.5 per cent ranked fourth among Indian companies while Sun Pharmaceutical Industries (38) with a 14.6 growth brought up the rear.

Four US companies- cloud computing firm Salesforce.com, drug major Alexion Pharmaceuticals, internet retail giant Amazon.com and open source software leader Red Hat were placed at the top slots.

Forbes said its analyses showed at least three key things that the innovative companies did to create and sustain an innovation premium - how well companies leveraged people, processes, and philosophies, differentiated the best in class from the next in class when it came to keeping innovation alive along with delivering an innovation premium year after year.