“To create the top 20 for our 25th annual rankings, Fortune and its survey partners at Hay Group asked 3,322 executives, directors, and securities analysts to select the 10 companies they admire most. Having fresh ideas and being green are among the qualities that distinguish this year’s winners,” Fortune magazine reports.
Fortune’s Top 20 Most Admired Companies, Innovation
1. Apple: For the second straight year, Apple is the most admired company for innovation.
2. Google
3. FedEx
4. Genentech
5. Nike
6. Whole Foods Market
7. Procter & Gamble
8. Network Appliance
9. Herman Miller
10. Starbucks
Fortune’s Most Admired Companies, Overall:
1. General Electric
2. Starbucks
3. Toyota Motor
4. Berkshire Hathaway
5. Southwest Airlines
6. FedEx
7. Apple: (Rank among: Computers: 2, IBM #1) You could say that Apple has landed – not only on our street corners and in our malls but also, for the first time, on the top ten of our Most Admired Companies list. Apple’s peers have watched it upend industries from computers to music. And now it’s become the best retailer in America. In 2004, Apple reached $1 billion in annual sales faster than any retailer in history; last year, sales reached $1 billion a quarter. And now comes the next, if not must-have, then must-see, product. “Our stores were conceived and built for this moment in time – to roll out iPhone,” CEO Steve Jobs told Fortune. If sales are anywhere near expectations – Apple hopes to move ten million iPhones in 2008 – the typical Apple Store could be selling, in absolute terms, as much as a Best Buy, and with just a fraction of the selling space. Up 4 places from its No. 11 ranking last year.
8. Google
9. Johnson & Johnson
10. Procter & Gamble
…
12. Microsoft: (Rank among: Computer Software: 4) Despite the marketing blitz for the new Vista operating system, the software giant slipped 2 places from its No. 10 ranking last year.
Full list and much more here.
Nice. This is admired up at the corporate level. I’d also have to say that Apple is admired now at the personal level. I went into the Cherry Creek Apple Store in Denver this past weekend to buy an iPod case. Every single section of the store was packed, from hardware to iPods to software to peripherals to cases. The line was 10 people deep. It’s good to be an Apple fan in 2007!
ROFL ,BIG MS Nowhere in the top 10. haha 😀
Gates and company at #12? There are many, many other companies that should be ranked above Mafiasoft. What crackheads at Fortune make these selections anyway?
What is so innovative about FedEx. Sure 20 years ago, but what have they done lately?
wonder why General Electric was rated as #1 overall? anyone know why?
“wonder why General Electric was rated as #1 overall? anyone know why?”
Probably profits from military contracts. Jet engines, etc.
What?
Microsoft made the list?
Must be a heck of a lot of Stockholm Syndrome types using Windows out there.
-Mac User from day one, no pain whatsoever –
Well . . . APPLE may be greatly admired but they also may have misstepped by associating themselves with “Bono” and his FAILURE of a RE(D) [or shoud that be “DEAD”?] campaign. Hopefully this won’t end up tarnishing our favorite “fruit” company too much.
http://adage.com/article?article_id=115287
Yaah, you gotta love all those “GOOD INTENTIONS” that ultimately end up wasting the time and effort of everyone involved. Just so, you know, they can all feel really JUICY-LIBERAL and WICKED GOOD about what they [HAVEN’T] achieved.
Maybe this is why the SMART aging rock stars stick to doing what they do best: Taking drugs and making music.
Google is 8th?
That’s strange to me.
SO I am not sure how serving stale coffee and stale pastries gets you number two on the list. Starnucks sucks donkey dicks. And it seems strange to have IBM ranked number one in computers. Based on what?
Bono’s BLUNDER:
Way to work a total NON-story into this article. The RED campaign works with many OTHER brands and I seriously DOUBT that any of them are going to experience any financial TROUBLE because of the SUCCESS or failure of Project(Red).
Blah blah anti-LIBERAL rant here.
Yeah f*ck Bono and his $18 million he raised to help people in need!! Screw him and anyone like him that tries to help poor people. As a matter of fact, f*ck poor people. And Africans, screw them too.
It’s precisely lists like this that cause vain men with frail egos in endless lust for adoration and praise to fall victim to their darker side. History will record Steve Jobs as a prime example this human failing.
“Our stores were conceived and built for this moment in time – to roll out iPhone,” CEO Steve Jobs told Fortune.
What will Steve tell Fortune and the rest of the world when criminal indictments are handed down for securities violations that make the options backdating small by comparison?
As with Enron, you have a CEO and band of executives stirring up the public passions for “how wonderfully the company is doing”, for how ‘we stand of the cusp of a great revolution’. Wall Street immediately gets drawn into the frenzy and unwitting investors clammour to buy company shares.
Unknown to the masses, all the while Steve is boxing Apple into an increasingly more untenable position. Why?
Because, and this is currently under investigation so names need to be witheld, there is compelling evidence that Steve Jobs STOLE the very technologies he is relying on for “Apple’s next great chapter”; for the “Revolution that only comes so often” in Tim Cook pitch to investors.
That the technologies behind the iPhone were stolen is precisely why the Asian clone-makers are able to do what they are doing so brazenly. Because they KNOW Apple cannot do anything about it.
What will happen?
Either Apple has to withhold from products the very inventions which got Steve so fired up in the first place, or Steve has to commit willful infringement. In the first case, the iPhone will fail because it will not be substantially different from the clones. In the latter case, Apple and Steve will fail for a whole cadre of legal reasons.
And either way, the options scandal pales by comparison because Steve’s actions have placed shareholders in a dangerously precarious position, where the stock value is built on illusions and criminal deception.
Is it Steve Jobs’ fault? Only partially. History will likely show that it was also the fault of Apple fanatics goading poor Steve on to ever higher levels of “brilliance”.
I’ve screwed an African.
Tom Strong –
Check out:
That explains some criteria for this list. Don’t know if that helps.
Read the f*cking story, douchebag. The poster has a point — Bono and his fellow tools ended up contributing nothing to the problem, and may have added to it. How that relates to Apple’s marketing and brand identity is important if you’re a stockholder — or even someone who cares about using our resources wisely.
Now go wallow in your anti-conservative screed.
“”wonder why General Electric was rated as #1 overall? anyone know why?”
Probably profits from military contracts. Jet engines, etc.”
It goes beyond that. This survey isn’t about profits. It is a survey of people in business and who they admire for the job they are doing. General Electric is admired for its efficiency and its consistancy in the face of global competition. It is admired for its successfly expansion into industries beyond its original core. That is not an easy thing to pull. But for more that a hundred years now, I think, GE has remained successful and relevant. THAT deserves admiration.
Oops…my bad.
Click here: FedEx
Hey “neven” -Don’t actually read too closely, okay pal? Bono’s Blunder wasn’t talking about a financial impact from what I saw. He or she was talking about the stupidity of being associated with an uber-liberal, change-the-world, let’s-help-people-by-spending-more-money, a–hole who actualy thinks he’s qualified to do anything more than write second-tier Irish-flavored rock songs while preaching to the world from behind red-tinted sunglasses. His “RED” campaign was always destined to be a failure as far as anyone who knew better was concerned. Now there’s proof.
Sarah! Didn’t I tell you to stop chewing that funny tobacca!
Apple = Good.
Bono = Meh.
Oh Gosh
So for every iPod Nano Red sold ……
$1.50 actually went towards charity
$8.50 went towards hyping up project Red
yuck
@Sarah:
1. Problem with your comment about comparison of Apple to Enron: Apple has over $10,000,000,000 in cash. Enron: ZERO while their executives started cashing out their options–after telling their work force that they could not. How stupid is that!
2. Stole??? Please, provide proof of stolen property (intellectual or otherwise)?
You are not thinking through with your comments. You have not read the reports by different news organizations (though I don’t trust them). But, it helps to form a stronger opinion of whether SJ benefited from those said options. So far, I have read three different organizations giving their take on the options. Each one of them said that SJ lost several billions–give or take a few billion.
Hold back your emotions so that you can provide a more cogent and convincing argument. If you want to be heard properly, discuss both sides of the story.
Hi Sarah!
Are you spewing telco FUD?
Thanks for playing!
What the hell does Berkshire Hathaway actually DO?