Amazon was named to Thompson Reuters’ annual list of the Top 100 Global Innovators on Thursday, marking the first time the e-commerce giant has made the list. The list is based on hard data, like how many patents each organization files, how successful they are and how often their intellectual property is used by other inventors.
Amazon has always been active in the innovation world, pioneering everything from new ways to sell books online, to how to streamline operations to deliver packages with increasing speed. More recently, the company has not only been developing its own hardware, but also patenting things like photo studio setups and new types of kiosks for retail locations.
But it’s not just about volume.
Reuters notes that IBM is consistently awarded the most patents in the U.S., but it lacks in other categories like influence. This year, the tech behemoth didn’t even make the list. AT&T and Xerox were also dropped.
Newcomers like Uber and Tesla face the opposite problem. While Reuters notes they’re both innovative companies, they don’t yet have the patent volume to make the list.
This is Amazon’s first time making the cut, joining fellow Pacific Northwest heavy hitters Microsoft and Nike.
The list also included 11 Silicon Valley-based organizations, like Apple, Google, Intel and Oracle. Reuters says that indicates 31 percent of the leading U.S. innovators are in the San Francisco Bay area.
You can find the complete list here, or head over to Thomson Reuters’ State of Innovation website.
