Forget summer Fridays and seltzer in the break room—Fast Company has set out to recognize the businesses that are rapidly accelerating their industries forward.
The magazine’s inaugural “50 Best Workplaces for Innovators” list features companies that, according to the publication, “empower all employees—not just top executives, scientists, or coders—to create new products, improve operations, and take risks.”
Among the companies that made the cut (and the initiatives that helped them land a spot):
- Johnson & Johnson—The company’s TEDxJNJ enables its employees “to share experiences, information and points of view” at nearly 80 events in 19 countries; to date, it has produced more than 500 speaker videos
- L’Oréal—In November 2018 the cosmetics giant launched the wearable UV sensor My Skin Track UV; it also has an internal technology incubator, and more than 4,000 employees dedicated to full-time research and innovation
- Procter & Gamble—P&G’s GrowthWorks program conducts consumer research to identify a problem, assigning a small team to protoype and test solutions on a metered-funding basis, earning additional investment after reaching pre-established milestones; it currently has more than 130 running experiments, including 10 that have launched
- Sephora—Through the French company’s Sephora Accelerate incubation program, female founders can partake in a weeklong business bootcamp, including one-on-one mentoring from Sephora partners and leaders and a demo day to present their companies to venture partners and the Sephora senior team
Fast Company’s editors partnered with researchers from Accenture to craft the list, comprised of organizations selected from the more than 360 applicants who answered 10 questions about R&D investment and company-wide programs and processes. After applicants were assessed separately by the editors and the researchers, the two sets of scores were combined. A judging panel consisting of editors, executives and other leaders reviewed the 60 companies with the highest scores and recommended the final Top 50.
