This week’s Business Week profiles the world’s 25 most innovative companies, ranked through a global survey of senior executives. Although IBM has slipped in the rankings (to #10 from #7 last year), the company is prominently featured in the accompanying cover story. From the article:

Few companies have embraced the open innovation model as widely as IBM, No. 10 on our list. While the company’s proprietary technology is still a force to behold — Big Blue remains the world’s largest patent holder, with more than 40,000 — the company is opening up its technology to developers, partners, and clients. Last year it made 500 of its patents, mainly for software code, freely available to outside programmers. And in November it helped fund the Open Invention Network, a company formed to acquire patents and offer them royalty-free to help promote the open-source software movement.

Read the full article: The World’s Most Innovative Companies

In a related post, Business Week’s design blogger Bruce Nussbaum lists the reasons why executives voted for IBM in the survey:

I’m still mining the rich data in the BusinessWeek/BCG survey of The World’s Most Innovative Companies. IBM received a couple of dozen votes. Here they are with the reasons top global managers think IBM is so innovative. Sam Palmisano, this is for you.

Link: What Senior Execs Really Think of IBM and Innovation

Tags:, , , , ,