This Innovation of Interest isn't really an innovation per se. It is instead the results of the recent Business Week - Boston Consulting Group's ranking of the world's most innovative companies resulting from a survey of almost 3000 executives worldwide. Here is the list.

01	Apple	14	BMW	27	AT&T	40	HSBC
02	Google	15	Hewlett-Packard	28	Virgin Group	41	Bank of America
03	Toyota Motor	16	Honda Motor	29	Audi	42	Exxon Mobile
04	General Electric	17	Walt Disney	30	McDonalds	43	News Corp.
05	Microsoft	18	General Motors	31	Daimler	44	BP
06	Tata Group	19	Reliance Industries	32	Starbucks	45	Nike
07	Nintendo	20	Boeing	33	eBay	46	Dell
08	Proctor & Gamble	21	Goldman Sachs	34	Verizon Communications	47	Vodaphone Group
09	Sony	22	3M	35	Cisco Systems	48	Intel
10	Nokia	23	Wal-Mart Stores	36	ING Group	49	Southwest Airlines
11	Amazon.com	24	Target	37	Singapore Airlines	50	American Express
12	IBM	25	Facebook	38	Siemens
13	Research in Motion	26	Samsung Electronics	39	Costco Wholesale

One of the most striking things about the list is that there are 7 automotive companies in the top 31 companies listed! They are Toyota and Honda, BMW, Audi and Daimler, General Motors and Tata, the Indian company that just announced the $2500 Nano car. What is it that makes today's executives view automotive companies as innovative? What are the great automotive innovations that these companies are creating? Are these true innovations or just the fast and cumulative pace of incremental change in an industry that is under increasing pressures and forces?

Props should be given to auto companies that are successfully navigating their way through the current automotive minefields, but, ask yourself, what is the last truly innovative thing you found in an automobile that compelled you to buy? Was it the cup-holders? The seat that folds into the floor? The blu-tec engine? The iPod connector? The latest crossover or fusion category? What has fundamentally changed about the automobile in the past decade that could truly be called an innovation? In a globally expanding market for cars, just surviving, or even thriving, is not innovation. When the choices are between alternatives that differ only at the margins (e.g. this fold down seat vs. that side opening door), the innovations that are occurring are likely to be more in the marketing campaigns than in the products themselves.

Leaving out Toyota's much discussed innovations in manufacturing for the moment, one can arguably make the case for the Prius (and other) hybrid vehicles, as being true innovations. It introduced a meaningful change in adoption behavior and has differential effects that are more than incremental. You may be tempted to say that Tata's Nano is a game changer, and that may be true. But it doesn't exist yet! Just because someone has announceda new concept and is working on it, or even if they are creating great new inventions to enable it, doesn't make it an innovation. Innovations are only those things that are adopted and used. Until then, it is an idea or an invention. This same critique would apply to the Chevy Volt - great idea, not yet an innovation.

It is hard to see what other things these 3000 executives are looking at to vote these companies into the top innovative companies in the world. One wonders if they themselves confuse ideas and inventions with innovation. It is always tempting to see all of the great things that are taking place in the laboratory and say 'Wow, that is truly innovative'. And who knows, someday it may well be. But the history of the automotive industry in the later half of the 20th century and so far in the 21st century hasn't been what most would call innovative. Perhaps the optimism of these executives is well placed, but we must wait to see before we pronounce it so.