It's amazing to see anything coming in from the stables of MIT. The TR50 from Technology Review is one of them. It's so sobering to see that amid this cacophony of opportunism and loud echoes someone is still maintaining an authority on technology and educating the world on what's in store. Thanks TR.The latest addition being the TR50, a ranking of the most innovative companies in the world which have put technology into use around a business model. It's not technology for the sake of it, it's making money and changing lives... at the same time it's a technology advancement too not just a new wrapper.
The list spans five emerging industries, viz: Energy, Web, Material, Bio medicine and Computing. Together the concoction is what puts data into intelligence making human life better and environment sustainable. It's a healthy mix of private as well publically listed firms, as innovation happens in either way.
Here're the companies:
- Energy: A123 Systems (safer lithium- ion batteries); American Superconductor (superconductivity with 10x throughput); Amyris (yeast to form diesel from sugars); Coskata (ethanol from garbage using fermentation + high pressure); eSolar (reflecting solar energy to generate steam); First Solar (replacing silicon with cadmium telluride); GE (two way traffic on electric grid); Joule Biotechnologies (sun + CO2 + water = fuel); Nissan (full- electric car, 100 miles/ charge); Suntech (world's most economical crystalline- silicon cell); Synthetic Genomics (oil from strains of algae); Tesla Motors (electric sedan- 0-60 in 3.6 secs); 1366 Technologies (increasing light absorption on by solar cells).
- Web: Adobe (streaming flash on small devices); Akamai (internet content routing over cloud); Google (secure Chrome OS); Hulu (free streaming video on net with commercial spots); IBM (analytics on cloud); Obopay (secure mobile commerce); StreamBase (real tiem info collection from net); Twitter (setting the standards for real-time communication); Ushahidi (sharing crisis related data from anywhere); Yelp (review aggregator on local businesses); Zynga (online social games).
- Materials: Applied Materials (solar cells on 5.7 sq mt. glass sheets); DuPont (butanol from agriculture feedstocks); Novomer (biodegradable plastic); Prime View International (cheap and green displays); Serious Materials (energy effecient drywalls and construction material); Solyndra (cylindrical solar panels).
- Biomedicine: Alnylam (drugs that target RNA); AthenaHealth (healthcare records on cloud); BIND Biosciences (nanoparticles for cancer drug targetting); Complete Genomics (genome sequence for $5,000); Fate Therapeutics (re-programming for stem cells generation); Fluidigm (microfluid chips to study gene expression); GlaxoSmithKline (drugs expanding the life span); Illumina (sequence m/c for reading entire genome for $10 K); Medtronic (deep brain simulation); Nanosphere (more acute clinical diagnostics); Pacific Biosciences (genome sequencing in 15 min for $1000).
- Computing: Amazon.com (easy download and experience of e-books); Apple (strides in user- interface); HTC (work on Andriod OS and Nexus One); Infinera (photonic IC for 400 Gbps traffic); Intel (thermoelectric systems for cooling chips); iRobot (robots for messy households and warfields); Luxtera (cheap and fast silicon photonics); Plastic Logic (organic transistor based e-reader); Tilera (world's first 100-core chip).
All this gives us a sense of things to come. Genomes, solar energy, high-speed connectivity, biofuels, cheap computing and better health.
My favorite picks- eSolar and Ushahidi. Let me know yours?













