Slack, Hopper, Shopify and G Adventures Among 2018’s Most Innovative Companies
One of the leading business media outlets in North America has selected their 50 most innovative companies for 2018, and two Canadian giants have made the list.
Slack and Hopper come in at 32 and 33 respectively, helping to add to a list that is populated by some of the most valuable and recognizable companies on the planet. The list was curated by more than three dozen Fast Company reporters, editors and contributors in an effort to “identify the most notable innovations of the year, and trace their impact on businesses, industries, and the larger culture,” according to the list’s mandate.
The Vancouver-based Slack was selected “for making inboxes obsolete.” The popular platform and enterprise chat app lets employees chat and send files within private servers dedicated to a specific company. The platform sports more than six million daily active users and over $200 million in recurring annual revenue.
The Montreal-based Hopper uses algorithms to find out when the best prices for plane trips are available to purchase and was selected “for encouraging users to take flight.” The platform is skewed to younger users and takes in more than 10 billion priced itineraries every single day.
Fast Company also breaks down the world’s most innovative companies into 36 sectors of 10 companies each. A few additional Canadian organizations make the list here, like Toronto’s G Adventures in the travel sector “for scaling responsible travel,” as well as Ottawa’s Shopify in—oddly enough—the social media sector “for letting more than 500,000 merchants sell directly on Instagram.”
Other companies on the overall top 50 list are a whos-who of tech innovation. Coming in at number one is, of course, Apple, “for delivering the future, today.” Rounding out the top five are other behemoths like Netflix, Square, Tencent and Amazon.
However, moving down into the rest of the top 10, some interesting and eclectic choices make the list. In sixth and seventh are two retailers; apparel brand Patagonia and pharmacy CVS Health, respectively.
The Washington Post sits at eighth “for bringing Amazonian ambition to the news,” obviously a reference to the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, and the outlet’s continuing dedication to covering the U.S. political ecosystem.
Other notable names on the list like SpaceX, Walmart and Waze are joined by lesser-known companies like Diamond Foundry, Stitch Fix and Social Capital.
One notable exception on the list is Facebook. After sitting in the top 10 in both 2017 and 2016, they were excluded from the list entirely this year.
Canadian companies that have landed on the list in the past include Frank And Oak and Intellitix.
