According to Forbes magazine’s list of The World’s Most Innovative Companies 2014 six of the top 10 have a presence in Ireland. Top of the pile is Salesforce.com. Not only is Saleforce.com No 1 on the Forbes list but this is a four-in-a row for the California-based enterprise cloud computing applications provider.
Interestingly, Forbes uses a measure they call the Innovation Premium with which they rank the companies from 1-100. According to Forbes, ‘the Innovation Premium is a measure of how much investors have bid up the stock price of a company above the value of its existing business based on expectations of future innovative results (new products, services and markets).’
Two Dublin based Irish companies are listed; Perrigo a global healthcare supplier is at 45 and Experian, a global information services provider is at 97 on the list. This is an important statistic and demonstrates that indigenous Irish companies are capable of recognition on the global stage.
Ireland’s reputation as a leader in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry is recognised as three of Forbes top ten are in this space and two of them Alexion Pharmaceuticals at No 2 and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in at No 5 are in the process of building new facilities in Ireland. Biomarin Pharmaceutical is No 7 and has a major production facility in Co. Cork.
World renowned e-commerce innovator Amazon is at No 6 and VM Ware, the virtualisation infrastructure solutions provider is at No 9.
