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THE WORLD'S MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES OF 2022

Fast Company’s annual ranking of businesses that are making an outsize impact


Previous
17 / Dapper Labs

CEO Roham Gharegozlou and his pioneering company behind CryptoKitties and NBA
Top Shot is making Web3 safe for normies.

33 / Walgreens

The pandemic revealed drastic inequities in healthcare. Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer
is now making primary care a primary goal.


01 / Stripe

The online payments giant started Stripe Climate, led by Nan Ransohoff, to
engage its customers to join it in funding the kind of audacious carbon-removal
tech we need to fight climate change.

04 / BlocPower

The clean-tech startup led by Donnel Baird is tackling climate change by giving
every building owner the opportunity to electrify—starting in low- and
middle-income communities.

10 / Canva

CEO Melanie Perkins’s $40 billion design juggernaut has become a word processor
for our modern visual culture. It’s made designers of us all, skeptics be
damned.

17 / Dapper Labs

CEO Roham Gharegozlou and his pioneering company behind CryptoKitties and NBA
Top Shot is making Web3 safe for normies.

33 / Walgreens

The pandemic revealed drastic inequities in healthcare. Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer
is now making primary care a primary goal.


01 / Stripe

The online payments giant started Stripe Climate, led by Nan Ransohoff, to
engage its customers to join it in funding the kind of audacious carbon-removal
tech we need to fight climate change.

04 / BlocPower

The clean-tech startup led by Donnel Baird is tackling climate change by giving
every building owner the opportunity to electrify—starting in low- and
middle-income communities.

10 / Canva

CEO Melanie Perkins’s $40 billion design juggernaut has become a word processor
for our modern visual culture. It’s made designers of us all, skeptics be
damned.

17 / Dapper Labs

CEO Roham Gharegozlou and his pioneering company behind CryptoKitties and NBA
Top Shot is making Web3 safe for normies.

33 / Walgreens

The pandemic revealed drastic inequities in healthcare. Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer
is now making primary care a primary goal.

Next
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Innovating on behalf of customers never goes out of fashion. Our definitive
annual showcase of the best in business features inspiring stories across a wide
range of industries, from advertising to wellness, and every corner of the
globe. The companies we honor below are pressuring the carbon economy by
creating a market for removing CO2 from the atmosphere (Stripe), developing
chemicals without the traditional reliance on fossil fuels (Solugen, Twelve),
electrifying lower-income housing (BlocPower), and using data to help countries
(Climate Trace), companies (Watershed), and individuals (Doconomy) minimize
their carbon footprints. They’re adapting to our world of hybrid workplaces by
building tools with the stresses of remote work in mind (Microsoft), creating
virtual whiteboards that turn every meeting into an opportunity for
collaboration (Miro), and developing design software that lets every employee be
an effective visual communicator (Canva). Other businesses are knitting new,
closer relationships between fans and the things they love, whether that’s the
global K-pop sensation BTS or Justin Bieber (Hybe); athletes from the NBA, UFC,
or La Liga (Dapper Labs); or simply a burrito bowl (Chipotle). These stories,
found on our list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies, plus the hundreds
of other ones honored across our sector lists, are brimming with insights into
how organizations can make a meaningful impact—on their own organizations, their
industries, and society at large.





Top 50
Sectors
SORT BY RankName
01
Stripe
For kick-starting the carbon-removal industry

01
Tackling climate change is going to require more than cutting greenhouse gas
emissions. Society is going to need to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. By the
next decade, the world may need to remove tens of millions of tons of CO2 from
the air annually; by 2050, that number could grow to 10 gigatons a year. Natural
solutions, such as planting trees, can only go so far. Stripe Climate lets
customers of the online payments company join its strategy to fund ambitious
carbon-removal technology by contributing a percentage of their digital sales
that flow through Stripe’s software. In spring 2021, Stripe adjusted its
onboarding process to allow new customers to join the program. Soon, one in 10
was opting in. Tens of thousands of businesses are now part of Stripe Climate.
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02
Solugen
For devising an emissions-free way to turn sugar into industrial chemicals

02
Solugen has developed a process of turning corn syrup into industrial chemicals
using enzymes and metal catalysis—removing oil, coal, and natural gas from the
process. “If you follow the [sugar] molecule,” Solugen cofounder Gaurab
Chakrabarti says, “everything becomes quite simple.” That comment belies the
complex science at work in the company’s Houston bioforge, which creates none of
the emissions of petrochemical processes and has yields of up to 90%. The
company launched with four chemicals (organic acids and aldehydes), with 17 in
development. They’re being used in water treatment, concrete production to
reduce cement use, and in agriculture to deliver nutrients to crops.
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03
Twelve
For turning the tide on petrochemicals

03
The startup’s carbon-transformation process uses a metal catalyst and renewable
energy to break CO2 and water molecules into smaller atomic bits, and then
re-forms them into new chemicals that can be used in manufacturing. Twelve has
already partnered with the Air Force to make jet fuel from CO2, and it’s worked
with Daimler and Procter & Gamble to demonstrate that it can re-create
ingredients needed to make car parts and Tide, respectively. The new chemicals
are a one-for-one replacement, so Twelve’s customers can lower their carbon
footprints without affecting product performance. The startup raised $57 million
last summer as it works to build out its process to industrial scale.
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04
BlocPower
For tackling climate change by giving every homeowner the opportunity to
electrify

04
In the United States, consumption of fossil fuels by residential buildings
generates 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, making the sector
the third most emitting, after transportation and industry. Solar panels and
advances in energy efficiency have made a dent in the building sector’s carbon
footprint, but until recently, no one was addressing the heart of the issue, at
the heart of the home: removing the furnaces, boilers, stoves, and other oil-
and gas-based products that drive demand for fossil fuels. These outmoded
appliances are exactly what BlocPower is tackling. Led by cofounder and CEO
Donnel Baird, the startup is electrifying buildings by installing technologies
like heat pumps—and it's focusing its efforts on low- and middle-income
communities. "I just know in my bones that we can address the climate crisis at
scale," Baird says. "I don't know if we will. But I know we can." 
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05
Climate Trace
For tracking down country-level emissions data

05
With 59 trillion bytes of data from more than 300 satellites and 11,000 sensors,
Climate Trace, a coalition of organizations formed in 2020, updates and
maintains greenhouse gas emissions estimates to give countries the insights they
need to direct climate mitigation efforts more effectively. It released its
comprehensive data sets last September, bringing carbon reporting up to date.
(Official emissions estimates submitted to the UN trail reality, even in
countries that are required to report every year, like the United States.) It
also has intelligence on where countries such as India create the most CO2,
allowing Climate Trace to assist them in their carbon-reduction goals. Finally,
Climate Trace and its partners can also isolate emissions sources by
geography—for example, plastic waste sites in Indonesia—to encourage cleanup.
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06
Watershed
For putting companies on a carbon diet

06
Only a fraction of companies calculate the full CO2 effects of what they
produce. The startup Watershed, which launched in February 2021, uses software
to help companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, Shopify, Sweetgreen, and Warby Parker
assess all their emissions, develop a reduction strategy, and connect to
carbon-removal solutions. Most companies only measure their Scope 1 (direct
greenhouse gas emissions from within the company's control) and Scope 2
(electricity and other energy purchases) emissions. Only about one-fifth of
businesses measure so-called Scope 3 emissions, which take into account the
production of a product and its use; that makes up about 80% of a business’s
true carbon footprint. Watershed looks at the climate impact of a company’s
entire “value chain,” as it’s known, and helps it determine an aggressive plan
to get to net zero via a mix of reducing operations emissions and funding carbon
removal. By the end of Watershed’s first year, it was helping customers manage
emissions equivalent to more than four times the carbon footprint of San
Francisco, the site of Watershed's headquarters.
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07
Doconomy
For calculating the cost of our lifestyles

07
Swedish environmental impact technology firm Doconomy quantifies environmental
impact with such tools as its Lifestyle Calculator, released last September.
Users complete a detailed survey, and Doconomy estimates an individual’s annual
emissions in categories such as transport, home, shopping, and diet.
(Transportation is typically the largest contributor to a personal carbon
footprint.) In 2021, it also launched the 2030 Calculator, a tool that
simplifies the process of calculating the carbon footprint of manufactured
products at a high level of accuracy across multiple product categories. This
allows brands to quantify the impact of all stages of their value chains up
until the point of sale of a product, based on factors such as materials,
processes, energy, and transportation. They can also offer their customers a
transparent look at the true environmental impact of their products and
services.
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08
Microsoft
For humanizing productivity

08
When Microsoft decided to create a snapshot of work and collaboration during a
time of unprecedented change, it had plenty of resources to draw on, from a
30,000-person survey to anonymized Microsoft 365 and LinkedIn stats to brain
research conducted in its Human Factors Lab. As the company analyzed more than a
trillion data points, “We started to see trends and patterns that we’d never
seen before,” says corporate VP of modern work Jared Spataro. Along with
creating an annual report on its findings, Microsoft is now using them to inform
new product features such as a scheduling option designed to ensure that
employees get breaks between meetings—a valuable mind-clearing exercise that’s
often overlooked in the age of video calls. Given the scale of Microsoft’s
business software footprint—as of July 2021, Teams alone had almost 250 million
monthly active users—no company is in a better position to help take the pain
out of productivity.
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09
SpaceX
For building a rocket that just runs

09
In 2005, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk scoffed at the idea that rockets had to be
expensive to be reliable. Instead, they could be the Honda Civics of the sky.
“You can have a cheap car that’s reliable,” he told Fast Company. “And the same
applies to rockets.” Last year, SpaceX made strides toward that vision,
completing a record 31 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket, including its launch of
the first all-civilian crew into orbit at a cost of $55 million per seat; NASA
had been paying $80 million per seat in 2017. “They’ve had this incredible
impact on the sector in lowering the cost of launch and expanding the number of
opportunities, which really is key to this second golden age of space,” says
Andrew Rush, president and COO of aerospace manufacturer Redwire, which sent
four advanced materials and plant science payloads to the International Space
Station via the Falcon 9 in December. SpaceX rockets aren’t as trusty as a
Civic, but for space, they may be as close as we’ll get.
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10
Canva
For making designers of us all

10
Canva is a word processor for our modern visual culture, adjusting anything you
see—text, an image, a background, an animation—with a simple tap. Its
easy-to-use, templated design platform allows people to create business cards,
birthday invitations, social media ads, sales presentations, coffee mugs, and
yearbooks. “We’re trying to reduce the time [it takes] to get you feeling
confident in your ability,” says CEO Melanie Perkins. The service, which debuted
as a free tool before adding paid Pro and Enterprise tiers, has systematically
rolled out tools for every content form imaginable. The result is an
increasingly robust product that has democratized the way design works—at home
and across large organizations. Canva, which is valued by private investors at
$40 billion, expects to surpass $1 billion in revenue this year.
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Stripe is paying companies to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. What's your
company doing to fight climate change?

Stripe Climate is the internet payment company's audacious bet to create a
market for ambitious carbon-removal technologies and help save the planet.

READ MORE
How Solugen creates carbon-negative industrial chemicals out of sugar

The biotech startup's enzyme-based manufacturing operation creates none of the
emissions of petrochemical processes.

READ MORE
The startup Twelve is brilliantly transforming carbon pollution into jet fuel
and plastics

The Bay Area company can make chemicals from captured carbon dioxide, and it's
working with everyone from Procter & Gamble to the Air Force.

READ MORE
BlocPower is turning every home into the equivalent of a Tesla

The clean-tech startup is tackling climate change by giving every homeowner the
opportunity to electrify—starting in low- and middle-income communities.

READ MORE
The rise of Canva, the $40 billion design juggernaut

Canva's easy-to-use design platform has become a word processor for our modern
visual culture. It's made designers of us all, skeptics be damned.

READ MORE
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11
Hybe
For conjuring a musical multiverse

11
America’s hold on global pop culture is over. The world’s most popular musicians
are the K-pop group BTS, capable of selling out both L.A.’s SoFi Stadium and
McDonald’s meals. Behind their success is Hybe, the South Korean media
conglomerate that consistently finds new ways to release content and cultivate
fandom. Hybe, which recorded $1.04 billion in revenue in 2021, acquired Ithaca
Holdings last April for $1.05 billion, becoming the parent company of Scooter
Braun’s talent business (which includes Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber) and
giving Hybe more star power as it explores new technologies and content formats.
The goal, as Hybe CEO Park Ji-won says, is to “further build this intimacy”
between artists and fans.
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12
AB InBev
For brewing change locally

12
The planet’s largest brewer spent 2021 focusing on local impact. In Latin
America, AB InBev debuted Tienda Cerca, an app that lets people check product
stock (not just AB InBev’s) in nearby stores, and used area crops for regional
beers, including a yucca microbrew in Colombia and a rice and corn lager in
Ecuador. AB InBev’s innovation arm launched EverGrain, which upcycles spent
barley into a nutrient-rich ingredient for use in foods like pot pies and pizza
dough. The company is also using barley straw to make six-pack boxes for Corona,
paying farmers for a formerly unused by-product. “We can influence other brands
to follow our path,” says Felipe Ambra, Corona’s global VP.
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13
Miro
For improving collaboration between far-flung teams

13
For some brainstorms, there are simply not enough walls—or sticky notes. So
there’s Miro. The digital whiteboard has taken on the challenge of remote and
hybrid work by scaling up so large enterprises can host virtual meetings of up
to 1,000 people in the same room—akin to the kind of engineering big-room
planning sessions that once would have required a hotel ballroom. Whether it’s a
meeting with five people or 500, Miro has added such features as clustering
every idea generated with one click, integrating its visual collaboration into
everything from Zoom to Microsoft Teams, and introducing templates so anyone can
run an effective goals meeting or design sprint. “The philosophy behind Miro is
to make sure the product doesn’t dictate to an organization how to do things but
supports how they operate,” says CEO Andrey Khusid. Between April 2020 and
January 2022, Miro grew from 20,000 to 130,000 paying customers. It now works
with 99% of the world’s 100 largest companies.
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14
Fanatics
For leading memorabilia into the future

14
With a database of more than 80 million fans globally buying its licensed team
merch, Fanatics has conquered sports apparel. Now the online retailer is
remaking sports fandom. In August, it secured trading card rights for Major
League Baseball, the NFL Players Association, and the NBA—gaining a foothold in
the $13 billion trading card industry. It then kicked off 2022 by acquiring
leading card brand Topps. Founder and CEO Michael Rubin explains Fanatics’s
criteria for evaluating opportunities: “How can we innovate for the fan? If we
can’t answer that, we’re out.”
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15
Snap
For augmenting smartphone cameras with a fitting room

15
More than 200 million Snapchat users play with over 6 billion augmented reality
lenses every day. Snap is now expanding its focus from what its users put on
their face to how they outfit their bodies. The company made advancements in
body tracking, cloth simulation, and object recognition in 2021, technologies
that are all “critical in order for fashion to look and feel realistic,”
according to Carolina Arguelles Navas, who runs Snap’s global AR product
strategy. Snap’s efforts translated into users being able to slip on Gucci
sneakers or Crocs or see the drape and flow of a Prada strap dress. Snap also
added voice and gesture controls so users could set up their phones as virtual
mirrors and then control color and style choices remotely. The company reports
that all these features, combined with full-screen ads that fashion brands could
buy to drive people to their own AR changing rooms, made Snap users 2.4 times
more likely to purchase a product after the AR try-on than without it.
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16
Flexport
For easing supply-chain chaos

16
“Our first priority is to solve customer problems,” says Ryan Petersen, CEO of
Flexport, which has built a software platform for companies to manage every
aspect of their supply chain. Flexport has risen to recent challenges, bringing
online everything from customers’ factories in Asia to the trucks that deliver
to fulfillment centers. With each node it digitizes, there’s more data to help
customers resolve issues and inform new Flexport services, including order
management, ocean freight procurement, and customs assistance. The company makes
money—over $3 billion in 2021—from how much customers use its services.
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17
Dapper Labs
For introducing normies to Web3

17
Dapper Labs, which makes and markets nonfungible tokens, created NBA Top
Shot—virtual trading cards featuring basketball video highlights—and helped turn
2021 into the year of the NFT. The company generated $100 million in revenue
last year from NBA Top Shot, which introduced the idea of collecting scarce
digital assets to millions of people. This early success is the product of
Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou’s vision and patient approach in an otherwise
frenetic sector. Dapper built its own blockchain, Flow, to handle transactions
speedily and its own crypto wallet to facilitate credit card payments, which had
never been done before. Dapper was also obsessed with refining the experience.
Notably, neither “blockchain” nor “NFT” appear during the process of purchasing
an NBA Top Shot video pack, and the company created an exciting, even joyful,
feeling that closely mirrors the fun of ripping open a pack of trading cards.
Dapper also learned from a generation of digital natives, such as YouTube and
TikTok influencers who wow fans by unboxing “hauls” of makeup or toys. “We
looked at where people were spending their time,” Gharegozlou says.
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18
Back Market
For legitimizing used electronics

18
Since its online marketplace for renewed electronics launched in 2014, Back
Market has been teaching shoppers that new is not always better. Last year, it
began offering extended warranty repairs and launched a mobile app with a
diagnostic tool that allows buyers to confirm their refurbished gear is in top
shape. It also, crucially, built out tools for refurbishers. The company now
sources and tests repair components, trains and certifies refurbishers, shares
data with them on trending products, and offers customer service on their
behalf. Back Market’s customer base grew from 5 million to 6 million in the last
half of 2021. “We are at the beginning of a trend that will be quite massive,”
says Vianney Vaute, Back Market’s chief creative officer.
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19
Farfetch
For serving labels, including its own

19
The luxury fashion marketplace, which works with high-end boutiques and labels,
helped small businesses weather the pandemic by giving them tools to list their
products online and manage orders and shipping, propelling Farfetch’s sales to
grow by more than 30% in 2021. The company also began mining its customer data
for its own women’s wear line, There Was One, which offers staples like organic
cotton T-shirts and biker jackets made from traceable leather. José Neves,
Farfetch’s founder and CEO, says the company uses data to inform design and
predict demand: “The idea is that we don’t ever overproduce.” There Was One will
be the first of several Farfetch brands, he says, all addressing “specific
niches.”
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20
BYD
For fueling tomorrow’s EVs

20
Founded in 1995 by chemist Wang Chuanfu, this Warren Buffett-backed Chinese
battery company has become a powerhouse of a carmaker, too. Backed by innovation
in core technologies (includings its DM-i ultralow-fuel-consumption
hybrid-engine system and lightweight lithium-iron-phosphate Blade battery), BYD,
which started making cars after acquiring a carmaker in 2002, grew sales of its
hybrid and all-electric passenger vehicles by more than 231% last year, selling
nearly 600,000 of these “new energy” cars globally. (Tesla is the only other
carmaker to sell more EVs last year.) BYD also sold roughly 85,000 EV buses,
garbage trucks, forklifts, and other specialty vehicles. By producing all the
essential components for its EVs itself—with plants in Asia, Latin America,
Europe, and the U.S.—BYD avoided the supply-chain disruptions that hobbled other
carmakers last year. And unlike Tesla, which bundles batteries from partners
like Panasonic, BYD makes its own—and sells them to other automakers. When
Toyota launches its first affordable all-electric sedan in China later this
year, it will use BYD batteries, motors, and other key components.
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How the BTS ARMY turned their fandom into the future of entertainment

Hybe, the billion-dollar conglomerate behind BTS, Justin Bieber, and others, has
big plans to create Marvel-style universes around its biggest stars.

READ MORE
How Fanatics is flipping the trading card market on its head

The company has already reinvented the market for sports apparel. Now Fanatics
is remaking the rest of sports fandom.

READ MORE
This swashbuckling $3 billion company is single-handedly trying to fix the
supply-chain crisis

Flexport brings digital savvy and a get-it-done attitude on behalf of its
customers to solve the bottlenecks keeping your stuff from getting to you
faster.

READ MORE
How Dapper Labs is making Web3 safe for normies with help from the NBA, UFC, and
La Liga

The pioneering company behind CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot won't rest until 3
billion people are customers.

READ MORE
Refurbished electronics pioneer Back Market is breaking our addiction to new
gadgets

Humans created 63.3 million tons of e-waste last year. By elevating used
electronics—and championing the right to repair—Back Market is fighting back.

READ MORE
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21
LivePerson
For schooling bots on human interaction

21
Four years after launching its first chatbot, customer service platform
LivePerson has turned “conversational AI” into an everyday reality that does
everything from help Dunkin’ customers sign up for its loyalty program to
administering COVID-19 screenings in a range of professional workplaces. In
2021, LivePerson added a feature called AI Annotator that lets a company’s human
reps fine-tune bots by identifying areas for improvement and proposing fixes,
democratizing a process that formerly required data-science expertise. While
only 25% of LivePerson chat interactions are fully automated, founder and CEO
Rob Locascio expects that percentage to hit 75 over time. One way or another, he
adds, “I don’t see a world where we’re going to be talking on the phone to
call-center agents in the next four or five years.”
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22
Chipotle
For transforming social platforms into launchpads

22
No brand has rolled social media savvy into its marketing mix—and thrived by
embracing new platforms—like Chipotle. Chipotle turned its Discord server into a
virtual job fair because burritos are gamer fuel—and its $15-an-hour base wage
appealed to the young audience. It created a Halloween-themed corn maze in
Roblox, offering $1 million worth of free burritos to users who succeeded. The
game was so popular—attracting 5 million players—that it was (incorrectly!)
blamed for a days-long Roblox outage. Even when Chipotle isn’t breaking the
internet, it’s giving its fans something to talk about, such as an apparel
collaboration with Carhartt that sold out in minutes. “You need to be thinking
about this stuff every day, about being first, being new, and being on the right
platform at the right time,” says Chipotle CMO Chris Brandt. That mindset helped
Chipotle grow revenue 26% in 2021, to $7.5 billion, with 46% of its sales now
digital.
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23
Fifteen Percent Pledge
For restocking the shelves

23
Less than a week after George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, Aurora James, founder
of the fashion label Brother Vellies, dashed off an Instagram post calling for
retailers that were committing to racial justice to dedicate 15% of their shelf
space to Black-owned brands. “People were not connecting Black small businesses
with the racial justice movement,” she says. Within days, Sephora embraced the
idea, and the Fifteen Percent Pledge was born. In the months since, 29 major
retailers—including Macy’s, West Elm, Ulta Beauty, Gap, and Hudson’s Bay—have
signed on, and more than $10 billion in revenue has shifted to Black-owned
businesses. Sephora also retooled its incubator program to focus exclusively on
founders of color. Pledge takers that committed to hiring and diversifying their
director-level (and above) staff have more than doubled representative
executives. To keep the momentum going, in November, the pledge created the
1,500-member Business Equity Community, a database that helps connect
Black-owned brands with retailers. It also partnered with Google to provide
members of the group access to digital training and tools to help grow their
brands. The organization is even reaching consumers directly: Its 2021 Gift
Black holiday gift guide, which highlighted everything from jewelry to dog
coats, helped drive $1.8 million in sales to 65 Black-owned businesses. “The
world is moving; consumers’ shopping habits are changing,” says James, “and they
want diversity on their shelves.”
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24
Deduce
For outsmarting hackers across websites and apps

24
Big tech companies like Google or Facebook have plenty of data to help detect
when someone's trying to log in as you, but smaller companies often don't have
the same ability to spot fraudulent login attempts. Two-year-old Deduce seeks to
bring this capability to the rest of the internet. Through a network ingesting
privacy-compliant data from over 150,000 sites and 300 million user profiles,
Deduce can identify and alert customers to novel, emerging fraud techniques as
well as coordinated hacks targeting the same user across multiple companies. “It
takes a network to beat a network,” says CEO Ari Jacoby. In 2021, Deduce
launched two new products: Identity Insights, giving companies early warnings of
fraudulent behavior, and Customer Alerts, providing users instantaneous
notifications of suspicious activity. Deduce claims it now protects more than
200 million accounts, with a customer base growing at more than 500% year over
year.
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25
Ramp
For inventing a better corporate card

25
Barely a year after its launch, Ramp is the fastest-growing corporate card in
the United States. Its 3,600 enterprise customers—from the real estate broker
Douglas Elliman to the creative agency Red Antler—use Ramp to build custom
parameters into their cards, making it easy for its customers to keep costs in
check and enforce expense policies. Last July, for example, Ramp became the
first corporate card able to program cards at the merchant level, so companies
can either restrict use with specific vendors or create an approved list of the
only vendors where charges can be made. In a volatile economy, saving money has
gone from a “nice to have,” says Ramp CEO Eric Glyman, to being key to a
company’s prospects. Ramp earns a fractional fee off every transaction, and when
you’re talking about a card that hit $1 billion in annualized spend less than 15
months after launch, those tiny fees add up.
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26
Faire
For matching independent retailers with brands

26
When what you’re really selling is personal taste, there’s Faire. Founded in
2017 by a quartet of Square veterans, Faire is a wholesale marketplace that
connects independent retailers (350,000 of them) with some 50,000 independent
brands. During the pandemic, Faire introduced first-of-their-kind virtual trade
shows, to link the two sides of its market, and it now offers exhibitions on
specific themes, such as fashion. The company also went global last year,
pushing into Europe. “U.S. brands are desperate to crack the European market,”
says cofounder and CEO Max Rhodes, “and European brands are desperate to crack
the North American market.”
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27
Roblox
For expanding its universe

27
While others talk up the concept of the metaverse, Roblox has been busy adding
new layers to its already robust one. It hosted concerts by Lil Nas X (late
2020), Twenty One Pilots, and Tai Verdes, and brands, too, have begun rushing in
to enhance the experience. Nike debuted products, games, and social spaces;
Ralph Lauren fashioned a winter wonderland landscape with ice skating; and Vans
built a virtual skate park. These digital happenings, says Christina Wootton,
Roblox’s VP of global brand partnerships, shift brands’ relationships from
advertising and virtual goods to “creating memorable moments” for users. Roblox
has almost 50 million daily active users (almost half of whom are older than
13), who spent more than 3.6 billion hours exploring last year.
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28
Food52
For whipping up a powerhouse media empire

28
Food52 may have started by bridging the gap between aspirational gourmet
magazines and intimate food blogs, but its menu has grown alongside the
expanding interests of its community, which is focused on the entire home. Last
year, Food52 spun its robust content arm into an even more powerful—and
broad—commerce platform by acquiring both the cookware brand Dansk and the
lighting and home goods company Schoolhouse. “Our goal is for people to see
[Food52] as a source of not just beautiful, incredibly well-made home products,”
says cofounder and CEO Amanda Hesser, “but also a source for inspiration and
information around home design.” With 2021 revenue exceeding $100 million—and
most of it coming from e-commerce—Food52 continues to build content and
experiences around its products. The company has launched a video-streaming app
with a lineup of original cooking shows and curated travel experiences. It’s now
planning to open a flagship store in New York with a live test kitchen.
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29
WarnerMedia
For playing to the home crowd

29
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s the value of choice—especially the
choice to stay home. WarnerMedia knew this when it announced in late 2020 that
anyone craving new movies could see its entire 2021 slate either in theaters or
on HBO Max on the release date. It was a gamble, but it paid off: Godzilla vs.
Kong and Dune reaped pre-pandemic-level grosses, and smaller films thrived too.
“We were the first over the wall,” says WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar of the
simultaneous release strategy, “and many companies followed us.” By the end of
2021, subscribers to HBO Max, which had original hits with Hacks and the Friends
reunion, were up 13 million.
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30
GoodLeap
For financing greener homes

30
For climate-conscious homeowners, solar panels are just the first step. There’s
also battery storage, resilient roofing, heat pumps, and electrical panel
upgrades. GoodLeap has quickly established itself as the technology bridge
between good intentions and the installers, manufacturers, and banks who can
fulfill them, thanks to its underwriting engine and payment plans. Plus, having
“just one single monthly payment for all these things,” as founder and CEO Hayes
Barnard notes, is speeding adoption of these products. Last year, GoodLeap
originated more than $5 billion in loans for over 140,000 homeowners. These
installations are on track to offset the carbon-emission equivalent of 545,000
cars, while saving homeowners billions in utility bills.
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How Faire is innovating to grow a global wholesale marketplace

Its ability to match independent retailers with brands makes Faire one of the
Most Innovative Companies of 2022.

READ MORE
How Populous built the world's first net-zero arena while preserving Seattle's
skyline

Climate Pledge Arena, designed by architecture firm Populous and opened in
October, uses the iconic roof of the original arena that dates to the 1962
world's fair.

READ MORE
How Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer is making primary care a primary goal

The pandemic revealed drastic inequities in healthcare. Brewer knows that urgent
care isn't a long-term solution. Here's what she's building instead.

READ MORE
How Framework is helping fix our unsustainable electronics industry

The company makes it easy to repair its laptops and has created a marketplace
for replacement parts.

READ MORE
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31
GlaxoSmithKline
For swatting malaria with its new vaccine

31
More than 35 years of research at GlaxoSmithKline came to fruition last fall
when the World Health Organization recommended a wide rollout in sub-Saharan
Africa of the pharma company’s Mosquirix, the world’s first malaria vaccine and
the first vaccine for a parasitic disease. It has been shown, alongside seasonal
antimalaria efforts, to be 70% effective at reducing severe malaria and
hospitalization of children, who accounted for 460,000 malaria deaths in 2020.
“The WHO was looking for another tool in the toolbox to combine with use of bed
nets, spray, and antimalarials,” says Thomas Breuer, the company’s chief global
health officer. GSK has shipped more than 4 million doses of the vaccine for the
pilot program—with roughly 2.7 million already administered—and will supply as
many as 15 million doses that it will sell at 5% above cost.
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32
Populous
For erecting the world's most sustainable arena

32
Unveiled in October as the new home for the Seattle Kraken hockey team and the
WNBA’s Seattle Storm, the $1.15 billion Climate Pledge Arena is poised to be the
first such structure to earn a net-zero carbon certification from the
International Living Future Institute, which requires buildings to limit and
offset all construction emissions and use only renewable energy. Architecture
firm Populous designed the building—located on the 1962 world’s fair grounds in
downtown Seattle—to incorporate both historical elements from the former
KeyArena and green-building elements, such as rooftop solar panels and a cistern
that recycles rainwater. The ambition behind the new facility is matched by its
scale: At 740,000 square feet, it’s twice the size of its predecessor and is
poised to take in some 2 million visitors each year. “We have shown that you can
create a sustainable arena while preserving some of the original building,” says
Populous lead designer Geoff Cheong. “It’s going to challenge a lot of
developers [and] be a model for the future.”
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33
Walgreens
For making primary care a primary goal

33
Walgreens administered 56 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine over the past
year. It’s now preparing to make primary care an even bigger part of its overall
healthcare strategy. In October, CEO Roz Brewer—who took the helm of parent
company Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) in March 2021 after serving as COO of
Starbucks for four years—unveiled the new Walgreens Health unit. At the center
of the initiative is an expanded partnership with primary care clinic company
VillageMD to open Village Medical at Walgreens clinics. The companies have
already opened 80 clinics across 10 markets since their initial 2019 pilot.
They’re now planning 200 clinics by the end of 2022—and 600 by the end of 2025.
(WBA invested $1 billion in VillageMD in 2020 and an additional $5.2 billion in
2021, giving it an ownership stake.) With this model, the retailer devotes 3,000
square feet of store space to an eight-room physician’s office with a lab
testing unit. Rather than serving as in-store urgent care clinics (such as CVS
Health’s MinuteClinics), these outposts are designed to engender personalized
patient relationships and offer coordinated care with Walgreens pharmacists. As
Walgreens scales these clinics, it’s partnering with insurers to open Walgreens
Health Corners, in-store spaces staffed by nurses or pharmacists who will
provide additional services, including preventative screenings, to members of
certain health plans. The company is also building its support capabilities for
patients on medication for complex conditions and branching into post-acute
care. It’s all part of Brewer’s vision of using Walgreens’s more than 9,000
stores to improve health outcomes.
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34
Guardhat
For protecting more than heads with its smart hard hat

34
As a symbol of industrial jobs, the hard hat has had very little in the way of
an upgrade, but Guardhat is changing that. In a sector with 874 million injuries
and accidents every year and 2.7 million deaths, the company's Internet of
Things- and cell-enabled hard hat has been used by leading manufacturers since
its 2020 rollout to protect their employees. Used by companies in chemical
production, construction, and mining, Guardhat’s Communicator hard hat
facilitates voice and video calls. It also tracks the wearer’s location and
monitors temperature, humidity, pressure, and noise levels. Paired with
Guardhat’s software, the hat allows for real-time worker safety monitoring.
Sites can create virtual boundaries that alert even offline wearers to avoid
areas with, say, chemical spills or active cranes. The hat has already been used
by more than 5,000 people, preventing more than 2,000 possibly dangerous
incidents, and Guardhat, in collaboration with Caterpillar, is rolling out the
Cat Connected Worker platform to protect miners.
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35
Framework
For repairing our relationship to one-and-done electronics

35
At first glance, Framework’s laptop hardware looks as slick as any other $1,000
Dell or HP machine, with a crisp, bright display and smooth glass trackpad. The
difference lies in how easily you can take the device apart, repair it, and even
upgrade and replace its components. Framework, which started shipping it last
summer and sold out almost immediately, proves that easy-to-repair electronics
are eminently possible. “It’s really about fixing what we see as a pretty broken
industry,” says founder Nirav Patel, “with this default assumption that these
products—even though they’re extremely expensive and advanced—are basically
disposable.”
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36
Otoy
For rendering artists’ dreams

36
Last December, nearly 30,000 people spent $91 million to buy pieces of The
Merge, a work created by the artist Pak and sold as a nonfungible token (NFT).
The haul capped off a big year for the Los Angeles-based cloud graphics company
Otoy, whose distributed graphics computing arrays help digital artists render
imagery that can be put on the blockchain in mere hours and which sits at the
epicenter of the NFT explosion in Hollywood. Projects include a collaboration
with the Gene Roddenberry Estate to bring Star Trek footage and even original
field scans of the Starship Enterprise to the Rndr network, its blockchain
computing platform, and another with DC and Marvel Comics artist Alex Ross to
create a new superhero universe on the platform. The Roddenberry project, which
will take years to complete, allows viewers to “literally walk through the
history of Star Trek—characters on the ship actually come to life,” says Otoy
founder and CEO Jules Urbach. The project was showcased at Apple’s keynote event
in October—Otoy’s OctaneRender software is available on Macs and is coming soon
to iPhones and iPads—which Urbach says “represented the convergence of all the
work we’re doing in Hollywood with the blockchain as well as our work with Apple
in bringing our rendering software to a larger audience.” That audience already
includes some of the world’s biggest digital artists, including Pak and Beeple,
which the company has worked with to bring to life holographic NFTs; Beeple
debuted the holographic NFTs late last year through a collaboration with
LightField Lab. Last year, NFT sales by artists using Otoy generated more than
$800 million, with the company taking a 5% cut of each sale.
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37
Bluedot
For delivering food pickups more efficiently

37
It’s satisfying to pull up to the curb the moment an order is ready. Bluedot, a
location-technology company for quick-service restaurants to enhance
drive-through and curbside pickup, helps them hit that mark using only software.
"We're able to detect the exact moment when the customer enters the
drive-through or the curbside pickup area, or when they walk into the store,”
explains cofounder and CEO Emil Davityan. Bluedot’s product suite, Tempo, which
launched last year, tracks a customer’s location, alerting staff to prepare food
at the optimal time. If restaurants don’t quite nail the timing perfectly,
Bluedot—whose clients include Dunkin’, McDonald’s, and KFC—also offers an
augmented reality experience akin to Pokémon Go to entertain customers while
they wait.
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38
Shipper
For piecing together Indonesia’s logistics network

38
While Indonesia’s e-commerce market is one of the fastest growing in the world,
its logistics network has struggled to keep pace. To address this problem,
five-year-old Jakarta-based Shipper is building technology that helps
third-party logistics firms manage orders and optimize their shipping routes.
Shipper has also constructed 220 fulfillment centers across 35 cities to receive
and store goods, and it's identified more than 12,000 retail points (e.g., small
grocers) that can aggregate orders for customers to pick up or have delivered by
couriers employed by Shipper. (Shipper gives couriers their own delivery radius
so that they are not competing against each other.) Since April 2020, Shipper
has grown its customer base from 2,700 to more than 20,000 online sellers.
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39
Promise
For redesigning how to pay the bills

39
Local governments rely on archaic systems and outmoded websites to collect
payments for everything from water bills to child support, leading to late and
missed payments. Promise, however, is infusing government sites with
mobile-friendly interfaces, adjustable payment dates, reminders, and
interest-free plans. “The basic thesis of our company is: People want to pay
their bills,” says CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins. In 2021, Promise helped utilities
in Cincinnati, Miami, and Milwaukee collect millions in past-due debt; more than
90% of its plans have been repaid (the typical rate is 20% to 50%). Promise also
relieved debt loads by crediting qualifying customer accounts with CARES Act
funds.
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40
Shopify
For bridging social media and sales

40
Shopify, which provides the e-commerce engine for millions of businesses, is
leading the charge into social commerce. The number of merchants using Shopify
to facilitate sales across platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest
grew 76% last year. In August, Shopify became the first commerce platform to
bring native shopping to TikTok, and it now enables artists to sell merch on
Spotify. “You’re seeing commerce on every surface where customers gather,” says
Kaz Nejatian, Shopify’s VP of merchant services. In 2021, it averaged 1.16
billion monthly unique visitors on the sites it powers (Amazon averaged 1.10
billion) and grew revenue 57% to reach $4.6 billion.
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Why neobank Lili is putting women freelancers first

Cofounder and CEO Lilac Bar David talks about creating much-needed tools for
invoicing and tax planning, and the importance of a welcoming logo.

READ MORE
Inside Grove Collaborative's plastic-free push

CEO Stuart Landesberg explains how the eco-products manufacturer and marketplace
is taking the environmental burden off its 1.5 million customers.

READ MORE
How Arctic Wolf is gamifying security training

This Most Innovative Company of 2022 proves that corporate training doesn't have
to be boring.

READ MORE
Brightline's behavioral telehealth platform is giving kids—and their
caregivers—peace of mind

Since launching in 2019, Brightline has gone from a cash-pay service in
California to a wide-ranging platform covered by a host of insurers in 44
states.

READ MORE
How World of Wonder—and 'RuPaul's Drag Race'—took over the world

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato of World of Wonder explain how their production
company became a global cultural force.

READ MORE
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41
Lili
For giving women who freelance financial control

41
When Lilac Bar David cofounded neobank Lili in 2018, the former payments and
banking executive wanted to create a brand that would be friendly to
freelancers, a market that comprises 60 million U.S. workers, and especially
women. Taking greater control of their finances is an important step for many
women who freelance; studies show that they are paid less for the same work and
are also less likely to be paid on time. David built Lili’s core features to
reflect freelancers’ banking priorities, like tax planning. Then she crafted a
brand that would make women feel welcome. “The financial industry [uses]
dominant names and a lot of black and blue colors,” she says. “We wanted
something more smooth.”
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42
Arctic Wolf
For gamifying security training

42
A shocking amount of security breaches (40%, by conservative estimates) are
caused by human error, such as clicking on a phishing link. Last May, Arctic
Wolf, which analyzes an estimated 1.6 trillion events weekly to help banks,
hospitals, and municipal governments mitigate risks from cyberattacks, launched
a program that engages employees several times a month with short, often funny
lessons based on real-world active threats. “We go heavy on humor and try to
connect with metaphors that are common across the globe,” says Jason Hoenich, an
Arctic Wolf VP.
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43
Planet Labs
For producing a high-res Daily Planet

43
With more than 200 satellites in orbit, Earth imaging company Planet Labs used
its global perspective to make change: Last September, it released the first
detailed mapping of the world’s tropical coral reefs; within eight weeks, 12
global teams activated marine-protection programs. By late October, it reported
having more than 9,000 users in the first year of its deforestation monitoring
project (launched with Norway’s International Climate and Forests Initiative,
among others). “It’s all about empowering action,” says Planet’s cofounder and
CEO Will Marshall, and “the first step is measurement.” Planet, which went
public late last year as a public benefit corporation, is now developing a
satellite with higher accuracy and image resolution, and reduced latency.
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44
Biotricity
For monitoring cardiac patients with wearable tools

44
When Biotricity founder Waqqas Al-Siddiq first conceived of his biotech startup,
he wanted to give people with cardiac issues a tool to monitor their conditions.
“Diabetics have a glucometer. Cardiac patients [had] nothing,” he says. But he
quickly discovered that to make accurate diagnoses, cardiologists themselves
needed a better mechanism—a way to gather lots of data over time. So in 2018 he
introduced Bioflux, a wearable, 24/7 electrocardiogram that continuously
collects and transmits cardiac data, with abnormalities monitored in real time
by a call center. Today, more than 1,500 cardiologists use Bioflux, making it
available to some 3 million patients. Biotricity is now making good on its
original mission. In November, it released Bioheart, a direct-to-consumer,
wearable EKG that pairs with a smartphone to help users better track their heart
health. (The $199 device is available from a range of retailers, including
Amazon.) “It gives you insight into your baseline so that if it changes you'll
know about it,” Al-Siddiq says. “Then, when you go to the doctor, you’re coming
in with long-term data.” The company also recently debuted its Biokit, which
contains a connected thermometer, pulse oximeter, and blood pressure cuff,
allowing patients to send even more information to their physicians.
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45
Grove Collaborative
For helping us get plastic out of our homes

45
Grove Collaborative is building the next-generation consumer packaged goods
conglomerate. The eco-products maker and marketplace, which had planned revenue
of $385 million in 2021 and has more than 1.5 million customers, was already
carbon-neutral. Now Grove has pledged to be 100% plastic-free by 2025, taking
the environmental burden off the consumer.
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46
Carrot Fertility
For providing inclusive benefits to workers seeking to build families

46
Carrot Fertility’s proposition is twofold: Fertility benefits should be
available for all and go well beyond egg freezing and in vitro fertilization.
Fertility is “a core part of human healthcare,” says Tammy Sun, cofounder and
CEO. Used by more than 400 companies with employees in more than 60 countries,
the fertility-benefits provider offers myriad services, including ones for
adoption and surrogacy. Carrot reports that its total reimbursements have more
than tripled in the past year, and it has processed more than $16 million
through the flexible spending debit card it launched in 2019. Carrot debuted an
online pharmacy (with a clinician always on call to advise on things like IVF
hormone injections), a first-of-its-kind at-home fertility test, and an expanded
telehealth program that includes mental health experts, doulas, and midwives.
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47
Brightline
For offering children—and their caregivers—peace of mind

47
Amid a growing mental health crisis among young children and teens, teletherapy
startup Brightline offers kids and their families vital support. CEO Naomi Allen
founded the company in 2019 to make children’s behavioral health care accessible
via virtual therapy sessions with licensed clinicians who can treat anxiety,
depression, ADHD, disruptive behavior, and speech disorders, as well as
prescribe medication. The platform, which now serves 15,000 families, expanded
in 2021 to include nationwide behavioral coaching: private, 30-minute-long
sessions, when trained professionals talk to kids about handling stress,
managing schoolwork, and increasing their confidence.
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48
Maven
For teaching creators to fish

48
“Creators are the professors of the future,” says Gagan Biyani, cofounder and
CEO of the online learning platform Maven. His year-old service lets digital
experts turn the knowledge they have been giving away for free via Twitter,
YouTube, and elsewhere into cohort-based classes, where students learn by doing
and from one another. Maven distinguishes itself amid the booming online course
market by requiring its instructors to take a class in cohort-based teaching and
how to recruit people to sign up. It also has focused mostly on trending topics
such as crypto and thriving in the creator economy, for which there are not
many, if any, courses. And the live element means that the classes aren’t
canned. The platform, which takes a 10% cut of course fees, has attracted such
popular instructors as Li Jin, Anthony Pompliano, Sam Parr, and Shaan Puri. Of
the 100 classes that Maven hosted in 2021, dozens have brought in more than
$10,000 apiece.
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49
Surfline
For predicting where tomorrow’s waves will be breaking

49
Since it launched in 1985 as a pay-per-call wave-forecasting service, Surfline
has built a reputation for delivering subscription-based surf reports, which are
now online. But Surfline is still cresting and propelling its passionate surfing
community forward. The company unveiled in 2021 a new wave-forecasting engine
constructed from the ground up that leverages advanced AI and machine learning.
The engine performs more than a quarter of a trillion calculations each day,
enabling Surfline to project where waves will arise, how they will travel, and
when they will arrive at the beach. The company also incorporates observations
of the sea’s surface taken from satellites to fine-tune these forecasts. Once
Surfline understands where waves are tracking, it uses a machine-learning system
trained with 35 years of its own ocean observations to anticipate how they will
transform into surf in the lineup. As a result, when the International Surfing
Association needed to predict wave conditions around Tokyo during the Summer
Olympics in 2021—the sport made its debut during the games—it tapped Surfline.
“We build products for ocean enthusiasts,” says CEO Kyle Laughlin. “But those
ocean enthusiasts also use those products to solve bigger problems related to
climate change or to help mitigate risk.” The California state parks department,
for example, is using Surfline to forecast coastal erosion patterns, and the
Australian state of New South Wales uses the platform to predict conditions that
increase the risk of drowning along beaches.
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50
World of Wonder
For working it better—and globally

50
“Drag is an art form that exists in every culture,” says Fenton Bailey,
cofounder of World of Wonder (WOW), the production company behind RuPaul’s Drag
Race. “It’s like [these countries are] sitting on a secret, and they don’t know
what they’ve got.” In response, WOW expanded Drag Race in 2021 to Australia,
Italy, and Spain, giving it 13 versions worldwide in addition to the U.S.
franchise. Bailey, cofounder Randy Barbato, and host RuPaul Charles have done
more than create a platform to share distinct styles of drag with the world.
They have also proved that audiences can’t resist the chance to compare all
those styles, which they can now do in one place: World of Wonder’s premium
streaming site, WOW Presents Plus, whose subscriber total grew 134% in 2021.
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Contributors: Alice Alves, Marjorie Backman, Jeff Beer, Nate Berg, Joe
Berkowitz, Jill Bernstein, Adam Bluestein, Lauren Bulbin, Morgan Clendaniel, Amy
Farley, Yasmin Gagne, Bobbie Gossage, Jeanne Graves, Michael Grothaus, Celine
Grouard, Elise Hannum, Ainsley Harris, Julia Herbst, KC Ifeanyi, Beth Johnson,
Charissa Jones, Stirling Kelso, Sophie Kobylinski, Nicole LaPorte, David Lidsky,
Connie Lin, Harry McCracken, Steven Melendez, Zlati Meyer, Pavithra Mohan, April
Mokwa, Jared Newman, Adele Peters, Clint Rainey, Ruth Reader, David Salazar,
Daniel Salo, Maja Saphir, Chelsea Schiff, Erin Schulte, Katharine Schwab,
Elizabeth Segran, Mark Sullivan, Kristin Toussaint, Talib Visram, Mark Wilson,
Amy Wong, Jay Woodruff, Christopher Zara

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Innovation in Hollywood with Ava DuVernay
Ava DuVernay joins Fast Company Most Innovative Companies Summit to discuss
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THE WORLD'S MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES OF 2022

Fast Company’s annual ranking of businesses that are making an outsize impact


Previous
17 / Dapper Labs

CEO Roham Gharegozlou and his pioneering company behind CryptoKitties and NBA
Top Shot is making Web3 safe for normies.

33 / Walgreens

The pandemic revealed drastic inequities in healthcare. Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer
is now making primary care a primary goal.


01 / Stripe

The online payments giant started Stripe Climate, led by Nan Ransohoff, to
engage its customers to join it in funding the kind of audacious carbon-removal
tech we need to fight climate change.

04 / BlocPower

The clean-tech startup led by Donnel Baird is tackling climate change by giving
every building owner the opportunity to electrify—starting in low- and
middle-income communities.

10 / Canva

CEO Melanie Perkins’s $40 billion design juggernaut has become a word processor
for our modern visual culture. It’s made designers of us all, skeptics be
damned.

17 / Dapper Labs

CEO Roham Gharegozlou and his pioneering company behind CryptoKitties and NBA
Top Shot is making Web3 safe for normies.

33 / Walgreens

The pandemic revealed drastic inequities in healthcare. Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer
is now making primary care a primary goal.


01 / Stripe

The online payments giant started Stripe Climate, led by Nan Ransohoff, to
engage its customers to join it in funding the kind of audacious carbon-removal
tech we need to fight climate change.

04 / BlocPower

The clean-tech startup led by Donnel Baird is tackling climate change by giving
every building owner the opportunity to electrify—starting in low- and
middle-income communities.

10 / Canva

CEO Melanie Perkins’s $40 billion design juggernaut has become a word processor
for our modern visual culture. It’s made designers of us all, skeptics be
damned.

17 / Dapper Labs

CEO Roham Gharegozlou and his pioneering company behind CryptoKitties and NBA
Top Shot is making Web3 safe for normies.

33 / Walgreens

The pandemic revealed drastic inequities in healthcare. Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer
is now making primary care a primary goal.

Next
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Innovating on behalf of customers never goes out of fashion. Our definitive
annual showcase of the best in business features inspiring stories across a wide
range of industries, from advertising to wellness, and every corner of the
globe. The companies we honor below are pressuring the carbon economy by
creating a market for removing CO2 from the atmosphere (Stripe), developing
chemicals without the traditional reliance on fossil fuels (Solugen, Twelve),
electrifying lower-income housing (BlocPower), and using data to help countries
(Climate Trace), companies (Watershed), and individuals (Doconomy) minimize
their carbon footprints. They’re adapting to our world of hybrid workplaces by
building tools with the stresses of remote work in mind (Microsoft), creating
virtual whiteboards that turn every meeting into an opportunity for
collaboration (Miro), and developing design software that lets every employee be
an effective visual communicator (Canva). Other businesses are knitting new,
closer relationships between fans and the things they love, whether that’s the
global K-pop sensation BTS or Justin Bieber (Hybe); athletes from the NBA, UFC,
or La Liga (Dapper Labs); or simply a burrito bowl (Chipotle). These stories,
found on our list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies, plus the hundreds
of other ones honored across our sector lists, are brimming with insights into
how organizations can make a meaningful impact—on their own organizations, their
industries, and society at large.





Top 50
Sectors
SORT BY RankName
01
Stripe
For kick-starting the carbon-removal industry

01
Tackling climate change is going to require more than cutting greenhouse gas
emissions. Society is going to need to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. By the
next decade, the world may need to remove tens of millions of tons of CO2 from
the air annually; by 2050, that number could grow to 10 gigatons a year. Natural
solutions, such as planting trees, can only go so far. Stripe Climate lets
customers of the online payments company join its strategy to fund ambitious
carbon-removal technology by contributing a percentage of their digital sales
that flow through Stripe’s software. In spring 2021, Stripe adjusted its
onboarding process to allow new customers to join the program. Soon, one in 10
was opting in. Tens of thousands of businesses are now part of Stripe Climate.
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02
Solugen
For devising an emissions-free way to turn sugar into industrial chemicals

02
Solugen has developed a process of turning corn syrup into industrial chemicals
using enzymes and metal catalysis—removing oil, coal, and natural gas from the
process. “If you follow the [sugar] molecule,” Solugen cofounder Gaurab
Chakrabarti says, “everything becomes quite simple.” That comment belies the
complex science at work in the company’s Houston bioforge, which creates none of
the emissions of petrochemical processes and has yields of up to 90%. The
company launched with four chemicals (organic acids and aldehydes), with 17 in
development. They’re being used in water treatment, concrete production to
reduce cement use, and in agriculture to deliver nutrients to crops.
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03
Twelve
For turning the tide on petrochemicals

03
The startup’s carbon-transformation process uses a metal catalyst and renewable
energy to break CO2 and water molecules into smaller atomic bits, and then
re-forms them into new chemicals that can be used in manufacturing. Twelve has
already partnered with the Air Force to make jet fuel from CO2, and it’s worked
with Daimler and Procter & Gamble to demonstrate that it can re-create
ingredients needed to make car parts and Tide, respectively. The new chemicals
are a one-for-one replacement, so Twelve’s customers can lower their carbon
footprints without affecting product performance. The startup raised $57 million
last summer as it works to build out its process to industrial scale.
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04
BlocPower
For tackling climate change by giving every homeowner the opportunity to
electrify

04
In the United States, consumption of fossil fuels by residential buildings
generates 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, making the sector
the third most emitting, after transportation and industry. Solar panels and
advances in energy efficiency have made a dent in the building sector’s carbon
footprint, but until recently, no one was addressing the heart of the issue, at
the heart of the home: removing the furnaces, boilers, stoves, and other oil-
and gas-based products that drive demand for fossil fuels. These outmoded
appliances are exactly what BlocPower is tackling. Led by cofounder and CEO
Donnel Baird, the startup is electrifying buildings by installing technologies
like heat pumps—and it's focusing its efforts on low- and middle-income
communities. "I just know in my bones that we can address the climate crisis at
scale," Baird says. "I don't know if we will. But I know we can." 
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05
Climate Trace
For tracking down country-level emissions data

05
With 59 trillion bytes of data from more than 300 satellites and 11,000 sensors,
Climate Trace, a coalition of organizations formed in 2020, updates and
maintains greenhouse gas emissions estimates to give countries the insights they
need to direct climate mitigation efforts more effectively. It released its
comprehensive data sets last September, bringing carbon reporting up to date.
(Official emissions estimates submitted to the UN trail reality, even in
countries that are required to report every year, like the United States.) It
also has intelligence on where countries such as India create the most CO2,
allowing Climate Trace to assist them in their carbon-reduction goals. Finally,
Climate Trace and its partners can also isolate emissions sources by
geography—for example, plastic waste sites in Indonesia—to encourage cleanup.
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06
Watershed
For putting companies on a carbon diet

06
Only a fraction of companies calculate the full CO2 effects of what they
produce. The startup Watershed, which launched in February 2021, uses software
to help companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, Shopify, Sweetgreen, and Warby Parker
assess all their emissions, develop a reduction strategy, and connect to
carbon-removal solutions. Most companies only measure their Scope 1 (direct
greenhouse gas emissions from within the company's control) and Scope 2
(electricity and other energy purchases) emissions. Only about one-fifth of
businesses measure so-called Scope 3 emissions, which take into account the
production of a product and its use; that makes up about 80% of a business’s
true carbon footprint. Watershed looks at the climate impact of a company’s
entire “value chain,” as it’s known, and helps it determine an aggressive plan
to get to net zero via a mix of reducing operations emissions and funding carbon
removal. By the end of Watershed’s first year, it was helping customers manage
emissions equivalent to more than four times the carbon footprint of San
Francisco, the site of Watershed's headquarters.
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07
Doconomy
For calculating the cost of our lifestyles

07
Swedish environmental impact technology firm Doconomy quantifies environmental
impact with such tools as its Lifestyle Calculator, released last September.
Users complete a detailed survey, and Doconomy estimates an individual’s annual
emissions in categories such as transport, home, shopping, and diet.
(Transportation is typically the largest contributor to a personal carbon
footprint.) In 2021, it also launched the 2030 Calculator, a tool that
simplifies the process of calculating the carbon footprint of manufactured
products at a high level of accuracy across multiple product categories. This
allows brands to quantify the impact of all stages of their value chains up
until the point of sale of a product, based on factors such as materials,
processes, energy, and transportation. They can also offer their customers a
transparent look at the true environmental impact of their products and
services.
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08
Microsoft
For humanizing productivity

08
When Microsoft decided to create a snapshot of work and collaboration during a
time of unprecedented change, it had plenty of resources to draw on, from a
30,000-person survey to anonymized Microsoft 365 and LinkedIn stats to brain
research conducted in its Human Factors Lab. As the company analyzed more than a
trillion data points, “We started to see trends and patterns that we’d never
seen before,” says corporate VP of modern work Jared Spataro. Along with
creating an annual report on its findings, Microsoft is now using them to inform
new product features such as a scheduling option designed to ensure that
employees get breaks between meetings—a valuable mind-clearing exercise that’s
often overlooked in the age of video calls. Given the scale of Microsoft’s
business software footprint—as of July 2021, Teams alone had almost 250 million
monthly active users—no company is in a better position to help take the pain
out of productivity.
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09
SpaceX
For building a rocket that just runs

09
In 2005, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk scoffed at the idea that rockets had to be
expensive to be reliable. Instead, they could be the Honda Civics of the sky.
“You can have a cheap car that’s reliable,” he told Fast Company. “And the same
applies to rockets.” Last year, SpaceX made strides toward that vision,
completing a record 31 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket, including its launch of
the first all-civilian crew into orbit at a cost of $55 million per seat; NASA
had been paying $80 million per seat in 2017. “They’ve had this incredible
impact on the sector in lowering the cost of launch and expanding the number of
opportunities, which really is key to this second golden age of space,” says
Andrew Rush, president and COO of aerospace manufacturer Redwire, which sent
four advanced materials and plant science payloads to the International Space
Station via the Falcon 9 in December. SpaceX rockets aren’t as trusty as a
Civic, but for space, they may be as close as we’ll get.
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10
Canva
For making designers of us all

10
Canva is a word processor for our modern visual culture, adjusting anything you
see—text, an image, a background, an animation—with a simple tap. Its
easy-to-use, templated design platform allows people to create business cards,
birthday invitations, social media ads, sales presentations, coffee mugs, and
yearbooks. “We’re trying to reduce the time [it takes] to get you feeling
confident in your ability,” says CEO Melanie Perkins. The service, which debuted
as a free tool before adding paid Pro and Enterprise tiers, has systematically
rolled out tools for every content form imaginable. The result is an
increasingly robust product that has democratized the way design works—at home
and across large organizations. Canva, which is valued by private investors at
$40 billion, expects to surpass $1 billion in revenue this year.
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Stripe is paying companies to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. What's your
company doing to fight climate change?

Stripe Climate is the internet payment company's audacious bet to create a
market for ambitious carbon-removal technologies and help save the planet.

READ MORE
How Solugen creates carbon-negative industrial chemicals out of sugar

The biotech startup's enzyme-based manufacturing operation creates none of the
emissions of petrochemical processes.

READ MORE
The startup Twelve is brilliantly transforming carbon pollution into jet fuel
and plastics

The Bay Area company can make chemicals from captured carbon dioxide, and it's
working with everyone from Procter & Gamble to the Air Force.

READ MORE
BlocPower is turning every home into the equivalent of a Tesla

The clean-tech startup is tackling climate change by giving every homeowner the
opportunity to electrify—starting in low- and middle-income communities.

READ MORE
The rise of Canva, the $40 billion design juggernaut

Canva's easy-to-use design platform has become a word processor for our modern
visual culture. It's made designers of us all, skeptics be damned.

READ MORE
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11
Hybe
For conjuring a musical multiverse

11
America’s hold on global pop culture is over. The world’s most popular musicians
are the K-pop group BTS, capable of selling out both L.A.’s SoFi Stadium and
McDonald’s meals. Behind their success is Hybe, the South Korean media
conglomerate that consistently finds new ways to release content and cultivate
fandom. Hybe, which recorded $1.04 billion in revenue in 2021, acquired Ithaca
Holdings last April for $1.05 billion, becoming the parent company of Scooter
Braun’s talent business (which includes Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber) and
giving Hybe more star power as it explores new technologies and content formats.
The goal, as Hybe CEO Park Ji-won says, is to “further build this intimacy”
between artists and fans.
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12
AB InBev
For brewing change locally

12
The planet’s largest brewer spent 2021 focusing on local impact. In Latin
America, AB InBev debuted Tienda Cerca, an app that lets people check product
stock (not just AB InBev’s) in nearby stores, and used area crops for regional
beers, including a yucca microbrew in Colombia and a rice and corn lager in
Ecuador. AB InBev’s innovation arm launched EverGrain, which upcycles spent
barley into a nutrient-rich ingredient for use in foods like pot pies and pizza
dough. The company is also using barley straw to make six-pack boxes for Corona,
paying farmers for a formerly unused by-product. “We can influence other brands
to follow our path,” says Felipe Ambra, Corona’s global VP.
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13
Miro
For improving collaboration between far-flung teams

13
For some brainstorms, there are simply not enough walls—or sticky notes. So
there’s Miro. The digital whiteboard has taken on the challenge of remote and
hybrid work by scaling up so large enterprises can host virtual meetings of up
to 1,000 people in the same room—akin to the kind of engineering big-room
planning sessions that once would have required a hotel ballroom. Whether it’s a
meeting with five people or 500, Miro has added such features as clustering
every idea generated with one click, integrating its visual collaboration into
everything from Zoom to Microsoft Teams, and introducing templates so anyone can
run an effective goals meeting or design sprint. “The philosophy behind Miro is
to make sure the product doesn’t dictate to an organization how to do things but
supports how they operate,” says CEO Andrey Khusid. Between April 2020 and
January 2022, Miro grew from 20,000 to 130,000 paying customers. It now works
with 99% of the world’s 100 largest companies.
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14
Fanatics
For leading memorabilia into the future

14
With a database of more than 80 million fans globally buying its licensed team
merch, Fanatics has conquered sports apparel. Now the online retailer is
remaking sports fandom. In August, it secured trading card rights for Major
League Baseball, the NFL Players Association, and the NBA—gaining a foothold in
the $13 billion trading card industry. It then kicked off 2022 by acquiring
leading card brand Topps. Founder and CEO Michael Rubin explains Fanatics’s
criteria for evaluating opportunities: “How can we innovate for the fan? If we
can’t answer that, we’re out.”
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15
Snap
For augmenting smartphone cameras with a fitting room

15
More than 200 million Snapchat users play with over 6 billion augmented reality
lenses every day. Snap is now expanding its focus from what its users put on
their face to how they outfit their bodies. The company made advancements in
body tracking, cloth simulation, and object recognition in 2021, technologies
that are all “critical in order for fashion to look and feel realistic,”
according to Carolina Arguelles Navas, who runs Snap’s global AR product
strategy. Snap’s efforts translated into users being able to slip on Gucci
sneakers or Crocs or see the drape and flow of a Prada strap dress. Snap also
added voice and gesture controls so users could set up their phones as virtual
mirrors and then control color and style choices remotely. The company reports
that all these features, combined with full-screen ads that fashion brands could
buy to drive people to their own AR changing rooms, made Snap users 2.4 times
more likely to purchase a product after the AR try-on than without it.
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16
Flexport
For easing supply-chain chaos

16
“Our first priority is to solve customer problems,” says Ryan Petersen, CEO of
Flexport, which has built a software platform for companies to manage every
aspect of their supply chain. Flexport has risen to recent challenges, bringing
online everything from customers’ factories in Asia to the trucks that deliver
to fulfillment centers. With each node it digitizes, there’s more data to help
customers resolve issues and inform new Flexport services, including order
management, ocean freight procurement, and customs assistance. The company makes
money—over $3 billion in 2021—from how much customers use its services.
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17
Dapper Labs
For introducing normies to Web3

17
Dapper Labs, which makes and markets nonfungible tokens, created NBA Top
Shot—virtual trading cards featuring basketball video highlights—and helped turn
2021 into the year of the NFT. The company generated $100 million in revenue
last year from NBA Top Shot, which introduced the idea of collecting scarce
digital assets to millions of people. This early success is the product of
Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou’s vision and patient approach in an otherwise
frenetic sector. Dapper built its own blockchain, Flow, to handle transactions
speedily and its own crypto wallet to facilitate credit card payments, which had
never been done before. Dapper was also obsessed with refining the experience.
Notably, neither “blockchain” nor “NFT” appear during the process of purchasing
an NBA Top Shot video pack, and the company created an exciting, even joyful,
feeling that closely mirrors the fun of ripping open a pack of trading cards.
Dapper also learned from a generation of digital natives, such as YouTube and
TikTok influencers who wow fans by unboxing “hauls” of makeup or toys. “We
looked at where people were spending their time,” Gharegozlou says.
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18
Back Market
For legitimizing used electronics

18
Since its online marketplace for renewed electronics launched in 2014, Back
Market has been teaching shoppers that new is not always better. Last year, it
began offering extended warranty repairs and launched a mobile app with a
diagnostic tool that allows buyers to confirm their refurbished gear is in top
shape. It also, crucially, built out tools for refurbishers. The company now
sources and tests repair components, trains and certifies refurbishers, shares
data with them on trending products, and offers customer service on their
behalf. Back Market’s customer base grew from 5 million to 6 million in the last
half of 2021. “We are at the beginning of a trend that will be quite massive,”
says Vianney Vaute, Back Market’s chief creative officer.
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19
Farfetch
For serving labels, including its own

19
The luxury fashion marketplace, which works with high-end boutiques and labels,
helped small businesses weather the pandemic by giving them tools to list their
products online and manage orders and shipping, propelling Farfetch’s sales to
grow by more than 30% in 2021. The company also began mining its customer data
for its own women’s wear line, There Was One, which offers staples like organic
cotton T-shirts and biker jackets made from traceable leather. José Neves,
Farfetch’s founder and CEO, says the company uses data to inform design and
predict demand: “The idea is that we don’t ever overproduce.” There Was One will
be the first of several Farfetch brands, he says, all addressing “specific
niches.”
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20
BYD
For fueling tomorrow’s EVs

20
Founded in 1995 by chemist Wang Chuanfu, this Warren Buffett-backed Chinese
battery company has become a powerhouse of a carmaker, too. Backed by innovation
in core technologies (includings its DM-i ultralow-fuel-consumption
hybrid-engine system and lightweight lithium-iron-phosphate Blade battery), BYD,
which started making cars after acquiring a carmaker in 2002, grew sales of its
hybrid and all-electric passenger vehicles by more than 231% last year, selling
nearly 600,000 of these “new energy” cars globally. (Tesla is the only other
carmaker to sell more EVs last year.) BYD also sold roughly 85,000 EV buses,
garbage trucks, forklifts, and other specialty vehicles. By producing all the
essential components for its EVs itself—with plants in Asia, Latin America,
Europe, and the U.S.—BYD avoided the supply-chain disruptions that hobbled other
carmakers last year. And unlike Tesla, which bundles batteries from partners
like Panasonic, BYD makes its own—and sells them to other automakers. When
Toyota launches its first affordable all-electric sedan in China later this
year, it will use BYD batteries, motors, and other key components.
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How the BTS ARMY turned their fandom into the future of entertainment

Hybe, the billion-dollar conglomerate behind BTS, Justin Bieber, and others, has
big plans to create Marvel-style universes around its biggest stars.

READ MORE
How Fanatics is flipping the trading card market on its head

The company has already reinvented the market for sports apparel. Now Fanatics
is remaking the rest of sports fandom.

READ MORE
This swashbuckling $3 billion company is single-handedly trying to fix the
supply-chain crisis

Flexport brings digital savvy and a get-it-done attitude on behalf of its
customers to solve the bottlenecks keeping your stuff from getting to you
faster.

READ MORE
How Dapper Labs is making Web3 safe for normies with help from the NBA, UFC, and
La Liga

The pioneering company behind CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot won't rest until 3
billion people are customers.

READ MORE
Refurbished electronics pioneer Back Market is breaking our addiction to new
gadgets

Humans created 63.3 million tons of e-waste last year. By elevating used
electronics—and championing the right to repair—Back Market is fighting back.

READ MORE
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21
LivePerson
For schooling bots on human interaction

21
Four years after launching its first chatbot, customer service platform
LivePerson has turned “conversational AI” into an everyday reality that does
everything from help Dunkin’ customers sign up for its loyalty program to
administering COVID-19 screenings in a range of professional workplaces. In
2021, LivePerson added a feature called AI Annotator that lets a company’s human
reps fine-tune bots by identifying areas for improvement and proposing fixes,
democratizing a process that formerly required data-science expertise. While
only 25% of LivePerson chat interactions are fully automated, founder and CEO
Rob Locascio expects that percentage to hit 75 over time. One way or another, he
adds, “I don’t see a world where we’re going to be talking on the phone to
call-center agents in the next four or five years.”
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22
Chipotle
For transforming social platforms into launchpads

22
No brand has rolled social media savvy into its marketing mix—and thrived by
embracing new platforms—like Chipotle. Chipotle turned its Discord server into a
virtual job fair because burritos are gamer fuel—and its $15-an-hour base wage
appealed to the young audience. It created a Halloween-themed corn maze in
Roblox, offering $1 million worth of free burritos to users who succeeded. The
game was so popular—attracting 5 million players—that it was (incorrectly!)
blamed for a days-long Roblox outage. Even when Chipotle isn’t breaking the
internet, it’s giving its fans something to talk about, such as an apparel
collaboration with Carhartt that sold out in minutes. “You need to be thinking
about this stuff every day, about being first, being new, and being on the right
platform at the right time,” says Chipotle CMO Chris Brandt. That mindset helped
Chipotle grow revenue 26% in 2021, to $7.5 billion, with 46% of its sales now
digital.
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23
Fifteen Percent Pledge
For restocking the shelves

23
Less than a week after George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, Aurora James, founder
of the fashion label Brother Vellies, dashed off an Instagram post calling for
retailers that were committing to racial justice to dedicate 15% of their shelf
space to Black-owned brands. “People were not connecting Black small businesses
with the racial justice movement,” she says. Within days, Sephora embraced the
idea, and the Fifteen Percent Pledge was born. In the months since, 29 major
retailers—including Macy’s, West Elm, Ulta Beauty, Gap, and Hudson’s Bay—have
signed on, and more than $10 billion in revenue has shifted to Black-owned
businesses. Sephora also retooled its incubator program to focus exclusively on
founders of color. Pledge takers that committed to hiring and diversifying their
director-level (and above) staff have more than doubled representative
executives. To keep the momentum going, in November, the pledge created the
1,500-member Business Equity Community, a database that helps connect
Black-owned brands with retailers. It also partnered with Google to provide
members of the group access to digital training and tools to help grow their
brands. The organization is even reaching consumers directly: Its 2021 Gift
Black holiday gift guide, which highlighted everything from jewelry to dog
coats, helped drive $1.8 million in sales to 65 Black-owned businesses. “The
world is moving; consumers’ shopping habits are changing,” says James, “and they
want diversity on their shelves.”
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24
Deduce
For outsmarting hackers across websites and apps

24
Big tech companies like Google or Facebook have plenty of data to help detect
when someone's trying to log in as you, but smaller companies often don't have
the same ability to spot fraudulent login attempts. Two-year-old Deduce seeks to
bring this capability to the rest of the internet. Through a network ingesting
privacy-compliant data from over 150,000 sites and 300 million user profiles,
Deduce can identify and alert customers to novel, emerging fraud techniques as
well as coordinated hacks targeting the same user across multiple companies. “It
takes a network to beat a network,” says CEO Ari Jacoby. In 2021, Deduce
launched two new products: Identity Insights, giving companies early warnings of
fraudulent behavior, and Customer Alerts, providing users instantaneous
notifications of suspicious activity. Deduce claims it now protects more than
200 million accounts, with a customer base growing at more than 500% year over
year.
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25
Ramp
For inventing a better corporate card

25
Barely a year after its launch, Ramp is the fastest-growing corporate card in
the United States. Its 3,600 enterprise customers—from the real estate broker
Douglas Elliman to the creative agency Red Antler—use Ramp to build custom
parameters into their cards, making it easy for its customers to keep costs in
check and enforce expense policies. Last July, for example, Ramp became the
first corporate card able to program cards at the merchant level, so companies
can either restrict use with specific vendors or create an approved list of the
only vendors where charges can be made. In a volatile economy, saving money has
gone from a “nice to have,” says Ramp CEO Eric Glyman, to being key to a
company’s prospects. Ramp earns a fractional fee off every transaction, and when
you’re talking about a card that hit $1 billion in annualized spend less than 15
months after launch, those tiny fees add up.
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26
Faire
For matching independent retailers with brands

26
When what you’re really selling is personal taste, there’s Faire. Founded in
2017 by a quartet of Square veterans, Faire is a wholesale marketplace that
connects independent retailers (350,000 of them) with some 50,000 independent
brands. During the pandemic, Faire introduced first-of-their-kind virtual trade
shows, to link the two sides of its market, and it now offers exhibitions on
specific themes, such as fashion. The company also went global last year,
pushing into Europe. “U.S. brands are desperate to crack the European market,”
says cofounder and CEO Max Rhodes, “and European brands are desperate to crack
the North American market.”
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27
Roblox
For expanding its universe

27
While others talk up the concept of the metaverse, Roblox has been busy adding
new layers to its already robust one. It hosted concerts by Lil Nas X (late
2020), Twenty One Pilots, and Tai Verdes, and brands, too, have begun rushing in
to enhance the experience. Nike debuted products, games, and social spaces;
Ralph Lauren fashioned a winter wonderland landscape with ice skating; and Vans
built a virtual skate park. These digital happenings, says Christina Wootton,
Roblox’s VP of global brand partnerships, shift brands’ relationships from
advertising and virtual goods to “creating memorable moments” for users. Roblox
has almost 50 million daily active users (almost half of whom are older than
13), who spent more than 3.6 billion hours exploring last year.
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28
Food52
For whipping up a powerhouse media empire

28
Food52 may have started by bridging the gap between aspirational gourmet
magazines and intimate food blogs, but its menu has grown alongside the
expanding interests of its community, which is focused on the entire home. Last
year, Food52 spun its robust content arm into an even more powerful—and
broad—commerce platform by acquiring both the cookware brand Dansk and the
lighting and home goods company Schoolhouse. “Our goal is for people to see
[Food52] as a source of not just beautiful, incredibly well-made home products,”
says cofounder and CEO Amanda Hesser, “but also a source for inspiration and
information around home design.” With 2021 revenue exceeding $100 million—and
most of it coming from e-commerce—Food52 continues to build content and
experiences around its products. The company has launched a video-streaming app
with a lineup of original cooking shows and curated travel experiences. It’s now
planning to open a flagship store in New York with a live test kitchen.
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29
WarnerMedia
For playing to the home crowd

29
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s the value of choice—especially the
choice to stay home. WarnerMedia knew this when it announced in late 2020 that
anyone craving new movies could see its entire 2021 slate either in theaters or
on HBO Max on the release date. It was a gamble, but it paid off: Godzilla vs.
Kong and Dune reaped pre-pandemic-level grosses, and smaller films thrived too.
“We were the first over the wall,” says WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar of the
simultaneous release strategy, “and many companies followed us.” By the end of
2021, subscribers to HBO Max, which had original hits with Hacks and the Friends
reunion, were up 13 million.
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30
GoodLeap
For financing greener homes

30
For climate-conscious homeowners, solar panels are just the first step. There’s
also battery storage, resilient roofing, heat pumps, and electrical panel
upgrades. GoodLeap has quickly established itself as the technology bridge
between good intentions and the installers, manufacturers, and banks who can
fulfill them, thanks to its underwriting engine and payment plans. Plus, having
“just one single monthly payment for all these things,” as founder and CEO Hayes
Barnard notes, is speeding adoption of these products. Last year, GoodLeap
originated more than $5 billion in loans for over 140,000 homeowners. These
installations are on track to offset the carbon-emission equivalent of 545,000
cars, while saving homeowners billions in utility bills.
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How Faire is innovating to grow a global wholesale marketplace

Its ability to match independent retailers with brands makes Faire one of the
Most Innovative Companies of 2022.

READ MORE
How Populous built the world's first net-zero arena while preserving Seattle's
skyline

Climate Pledge Arena, designed by architecture firm Populous and opened in
October, uses the iconic roof of the original arena that dates to the 1962
world's fair.

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How Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer is making primary care a primary goal

The pandemic revealed drastic inequities in healthcare. Brewer knows that urgent
care isn't a long-term solution. Here's what she's building instead.

READ MORE
How Framework is helping fix our unsustainable electronics industry

The company makes it easy to repair its laptops and has created a marketplace
for replacement parts.

READ MORE
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31
GlaxoSmithKline
For swatting malaria with its new vaccine

31
More than 35 years of research at GlaxoSmithKline came to fruition last fall
when the World Health Organization recommended a wide rollout in sub-Saharan
Africa of the pharma company’s Mosquirix, the world’s first malaria vaccine and
the first vaccine for a parasitic disease. It has been shown, alongside seasonal
antimalaria efforts, to be 70% effective at reducing severe malaria and
hospitalization of children, who accounted for 460,000 malaria deaths in 2020.
“The WHO was looking for another tool in the toolbox to combine with use of bed
nets, spray, and antimalarials,” says Thomas Breuer, the company’s chief global
health officer. GSK has shipped more than 4 million doses of the vaccine for the
pilot program—with roughly 2.7 million already administered—and will supply as
many as 15 million doses that it will sell at 5% above cost.
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32
Populous
For erecting the world's most sustainable arena

32
Unveiled in October as the new home for the Seattle Kraken hockey team and the
WNBA’s Seattle Storm, the $1.15 billion Climate Pledge Arena is poised to be the
first such structure to earn a net-zero carbon certification from the
International Living Future Institute, which requires buildings to limit and
offset all construction emissions and use only renewable energy. Architecture
firm Populous designed the building—located on the 1962 world’s fair grounds in
downtown Seattle—to incorporate both historical elements from the former
KeyArena and green-building elements, such as rooftop solar panels and a cistern
that recycles rainwater. The ambition behind the new facility is matched by its
scale: At 740,000 square feet, it’s twice the size of its predecessor and is
poised to take in some 2 million visitors each year. “We have shown that you can
create a sustainable arena while preserving some of the original building,” says
Populous lead designer Geoff Cheong. “It’s going to challenge a lot of
developers [and] be a model for the future.”
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33
Walgreens
For making primary care a primary goal

33
Walgreens administered 56 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine over the past
year. It’s now preparing to make primary care an even bigger part of its overall
healthcare strategy. In October, CEO Roz Brewer—who took the helm of parent
company Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) in March 2021 after serving as COO of
Starbucks for four years—unveiled the new Walgreens Health unit. At the center
of the initiative is an expanded partnership with primary care clinic company
VillageMD to open Village Medical at Walgreens clinics. The companies have
already opened 80 clinics across 10 markets since their initial 2019 pilot.
They’re now planning 200 clinics by the end of 2022—and 600 by the end of 2025.
(WBA invested $1 billion in VillageMD in 2020 and an additional $5.2 billion in
2021, giving it an ownership stake.) With this model, the retailer devotes 3,000
square feet of store space to an eight-room physician’s office with a lab
testing unit. Rather than serving as in-store urgent care clinics (such as CVS
Health’s MinuteClinics), these outposts are designed to engender personalized
patient relationships and offer coordinated care with Walgreens pharmacists. As
Walgreens scales these clinics, it’s partnering with insurers to open Walgreens
Health Corners, in-store spaces staffed by nurses or pharmacists who will
provide additional services, including preventative screenings, to members of
certain health plans. The company is also building its support capabilities for
patients on medication for complex conditions and branching into post-acute
care. It’s all part of Brewer’s vision of using Walgreens’s more than 9,000
stores to improve health outcomes.
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34
Guardhat
For protecting more than heads with its smart hard hat

34
As a symbol of industrial jobs, the hard hat has had very little in the way of
an upgrade, but Guardhat is changing that. In a sector with 874 million injuries
and accidents every year and 2.7 million deaths, the company's Internet of
Things- and cell-enabled hard hat has been used by leading manufacturers since
its 2020 rollout to protect their employees. Used by companies in chemical
production, construction, and mining, Guardhat’s Communicator hard hat
facilitates voice and video calls. It also tracks the wearer’s location and
monitors temperature, humidity, pressure, and noise levels. Paired with
Guardhat’s software, the hat allows for real-time worker safety monitoring.
Sites can create virtual boundaries that alert even offline wearers to avoid
areas with, say, chemical spills or active cranes. The hat has already been used
by more than 5,000 people, preventing more than 2,000 possibly dangerous
incidents, and Guardhat, in collaboration with Caterpillar, is rolling out the
Cat Connected Worker platform to protect miners.
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35
Framework
For repairing our relationship to one-and-done electronics

35
At first glance, Framework’s laptop hardware looks as slick as any other $1,000
Dell or HP machine, with a crisp, bright display and smooth glass trackpad. The
difference lies in how easily you can take the device apart, repair it, and even
upgrade and replace its components. Framework, which started shipping it last
summer and sold out almost immediately, proves that easy-to-repair electronics
are eminently possible. “It’s really about fixing what we see as a pretty broken
industry,” says founder Nirav Patel, “with this default assumption that these
products—even though they’re extremely expensive and advanced—are basically
disposable.”
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36
Otoy
For rendering artists’ dreams

36
Last December, nearly 30,000 people spent $91 million to buy pieces of The
Merge, a work created by the artist Pak and sold as a nonfungible token (NFT).
The haul capped off a big year for the Los Angeles-based cloud graphics company
Otoy, whose distributed graphics computing arrays help digital artists render
imagery that can be put on the blockchain in mere hours and which sits at the
epicenter of the NFT explosion in Hollywood. Projects include a collaboration
with the Gene Roddenberry Estate to bring Star Trek footage and even original
field scans of the Starship Enterprise to the Rndr network, its blockchain
computing platform, and another with DC and Marvel Comics artist Alex Ross to
create a new superhero universe on the platform. The Roddenberry project, which
will take years to complete, allows viewers to “literally walk through the
history of Star Trek—characters on the ship actually come to life,” says Otoy
founder and CEO Jules Urbach. The project was showcased at Apple’s keynote event
in October—Otoy’s OctaneRender software is available on Macs and is coming soon
to iPhones and iPads—which Urbach says “represented the convergence of all the
work we’re doing in Hollywood with the blockchain as well as our work with Apple
in bringing our rendering software to a larger audience.” That audience already
includes some of the world’s biggest digital artists, including Pak and Beeple,
which the company has worked with to bring to life holographic NFTs; Beeple
debuted the holographic NFTs late last year through a collaboration with
LightField Lab. Last year, NFT sales by artists using Otoy generated more than
$800 million, with the company taking a 5% cut of each sale.
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37
Bluedot
For delivering food pickups more efficiently

37
It’s satisfying to pull up to the curb the moment an order is ready. Bluedot, a
location-technology company for quick-service restaurants to enhance
drive-through and curbside pickup, helps them hit that mark using only software.
"We're able to detect the exact moment when the customer enters the
drive-through or the curbside pickup area, or when they walk into the store,”
explains cofounder and CEO Emil Davityan. Bluedot’s product suite, Tempo, which
launched last year, tracks a customer’s location, alerting staff to prepare food
at the optimal time. If restaurants don’t quite nail the timing perfectly,
Bluedot—whose clients include Dunkin’, McDonald’s, and KFC—also offers an
augmented reality experience akin to Pokémon Go to entertain customers while
they wait.
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38
Shipper
For piecing together Indonesia’s logistics network

38
While Indonesia’s e-commerce market is one of the fastest growing in the world,
its logistics network has struggled to keep pace. To address this problem,
five-year-old Jakarta-based Shipper is building technology that helps
third-party logistics firms manage orders and optimize their shipping routes.
Shipper has also constructed 220 fulfillment centers across 35 cities to receive
and store goods, and it's identified more than 12,000 retail points (e.g., small
grocers) that can aggregate orders for customers to pick up or have delivered by
couriers employed by Shipper. (Shipper gives couriers their own delivery radius
so that they are not competing against each other.) Since April 2020, Shipper
has grown its customer base from 2,700 to more than 20,000 online sellers.
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39
Promise
For redesigning how to pay the bills

39
Local governments rely on archaic systems and outmoded websites to collect
payments for everything from water bills to child support, leading to late and
missed payments. Promise, however, is infusing government sites with
mobile-friendly interfaces, adjustable payment dates, reminders, and
interest-free plans. “The basic thesis of our company is: People want to pay
their bills,” says CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins. In 2021, Promise helped utilities
in Cincinnati, Miami, and Milwaukee collect millions in past-due debt; more than
90% of its plans have been repaid (the typical rate is 20% to 50%). Promise also
relieved debt loads by crediting qualifying customer accounts with CARES Act
funds.
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40
Shopify
For bridging social media and sales

40
Shopify, which provides the e-commerce engine for millions of businesses, is
leading the charge into social commerce. The number of merchants using Shopify
to facilitate sales across platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest
grew 76% last year. In August, Shopify became the first commerce platform to
bring native shopping to TikTok, and it now enables artists to sell merch on
Spotify. “You’re seeing commerce on every surface where customers gather,” says
Kaz Nejatian, Shopify’s VP of merchant services. In 2021, it averaged 1.16
billion monthly unique visitors on the sites it powers (Amazon averaged 1.10
billion) and grew revenue 57% to reach $4.6 billion.
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Why neobank Lili is putting women freelancers first

Cofounder and CEO Lilac Bar David talks about creating much-needed tools for
invoicing and tax planning, and the importance of a welcoming logo.

READ MORE
Inside Grove Collaborative's plastic-free push

CEO Stuart Landesberg explains how the eco-products manufacturer and marketplace
is taking the environmental burden off its 1.5 million customers.

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How Arctic Wolf is gamifying security training

This Most Innovative Company of 2022 proves that corporate training doesn't have
to be boring.

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Brightline's behavioral telehealth platform is giving kids—and their
caregivers—peace of mind

Since launching in 2019, Brightline has gone from a cash-pay service in
California to a wide-ranging platform covered by a host of insurers in 44
states.

READ MORE
How World of Wonder—and 'RuPaul's Drag Race'—took over the world

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato of World of Wonder explain how their production
company became a global cultural force.

READ MORE
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41
Lili
For giving women who freelance financial control

41
When Lilac Bar David cofounded neobank Lili in 2018, the former payments and
banking executive wanted to create a brand that would be friendly to
freelancers, a market that comprises 60 million U.S. workers, and especially
women. Taking greater control of their finances is an important step for many
women who freelance; studies show that they are paid less for the same work and
are also less likely to be paid on time. David built Lili’s core features to
reflect freelancers’ banking priorities, like tax planning. Then she crafted a
brand that would make women feel welcome. “The financial industry [uses]
dominant names and a lot of black and blue colors,” she says. “We wanted
something more smooth.”
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42
Arctic Wolf
For gamifying security training

42
A shocking amount of security breaches (40%, by conservative estimates) are
caused by human error, such as clicking on a phishing link. Last May, Arctic
Wolf, which analyzes an estimated 1.6 trillion events weekly to help banks,
hospitals, and municipal governments mitigate risks from cyberattacks, launched
a program that engages employees several times a month with short, often funny
lessons based on real-world active threats. “We go heavy on humor and try to
connect with metaphors that are common across the globe,” says Jason Hoenich, an
Arctic Wolf VP.
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43
Planet Labs
For producing a high-res Daily Planet

43
With more than 200 satellites in orbit, Earth imaging company Planet Labs used
its global perspective to make change: Last September, it released the first
detailed mapping of the world’s tropical coral reefs; within eight weeks, 12
global teams activated marine-protection programs. By late October, it reported
having more than 9,000 users in the first year of its deforestation monitoring
project (launched with Norway’s International Climate and Forests Initiative,
among others). “It’s all about empowering action,” says Planet’s cofounder and
CEO Will Marshall, and “the first step is measurement.” Planet, which went
public late last year as a public benefit corporation, is now developing a
satellite with higher accuracy and image resolution, and reduced latency.
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44
Biotricity
For monitoring cardiac patients with wearable tools

44
When Biotricity founder Waqqas Al-Siddiq first conceived of his biotech startup,
he wanted to give people with cardiac issues a tool to monitor their conditions.
“Diabetics have a glucometer. Cardiac patients [had] nothing,” he says. But he
quickly discovered that to make accurate diagnoses, cardiologists themselves
needed a better mechanism—a way to gather lots of data over time. So in 2018 he
introduced Bioflux, a wearable, 24/7 electrocardiogram that continuously
collects and transmits cardiac data, with abnormalities monitored in real time
by a call center. Today, more than 1,500 cardiologists use Bioflux, making it
available to some 3 million patients. Biotricity is now making good on its
original mission. In November, it released Bioheart, a direct-to-consumer,
wearable EKG that pairs with a smartphone to help users better track their heart
health. (The $199 device is available from a range of retailers, including
Amazon.) “It gives you insight into your baseline so that if it changes you'll
know about it,” Al-Siddiq says. “Then, when you go to the doctor, you’re coming
in with long-term data.” The company also recently debuted its Biokit, which
contains a connected thermometer, pulse oximeter, and blood pressure cuff,
allowing patients to send even more information to their physicians.
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45
Grove Collaborative
For helping us get plastic out of our homes

45
Grove Collaborative is building the next-generation consumer packaged goods
conglomerate. The eco-products maker and marketplace, which had planned revenue
of $385 million in 2021 and has more than 1.5 million customers, was already
carbon-neutral. Now Grove has pledged to be 100% plastic-free by 2025, taking
the environmental burden off the consumer.
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46
Carrot Fertility
For providing inclusive benefits to workers seeking to build families

46
Carrot Fertility’s proposition is twofold: Fertility benefits should be
available for all and go well beyond egg freezing and in vitro fertilization.
Fertility is “a core part of human healthcare,” says Tammy Sun, cofounder and
CEO. Used by more than 400 companies with employees in more than 60 countries,
the fertility-benefits provider offers myriad services, including ones for
adoption and surrogacy. Carrot reports that its total reimbursements have more
than tripled in the past year, and it has processed more than $16 million
through the flexible spending debit card it launched in 2019. Carrot debuted an
online pharmacy (with a clinician always on call to advise on things like IVF
hormone injections), a first-of-its-kind at-home fertility test, and an expanded
telehealth program that includes mental health experts, doulas, and midwives.
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47
Brightline
For offering children—and their caregivers—peace of mind

47
Amid a growing mental health crisis among young children and teens, teletherapy
startup Brightline offers kids and their families vital support. CEO Naomi Allen
founded the company in 2019 to make children’s behavioral health care accessible
via virtual therapy sessions with licensed clinicians who can treat anxiety,
depression, ADHD, disruptive behavior, and speech disorders, as well as
prescribe medication. The platform, which now serves 15,000 families, expanded
in 2021 to include nationwide behavioral coaching: private, 30-minute-long
sessions, when trained professionals talk to kids about handling stress,
managing schoolwork, and increasing their confidence.
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48
Maven
For teaching creators to fish

48
“Creators are the professors of the future,” says Gagan Biyani, cofounder and
CEO of the online learning platform Maven. His year-old service lets digital
experts turn the knowledge they have been giving away for free via Twitter,
YouTube, and elsewhere into cohort-based classes, where students learn by doing
and from one another. Maven distinguishes itself amid the booming online course
market by requiring its instructors to take a class in cohort-based teaching and
how to recruit people to sign up. It also has focused mostly on trending topics
such as crypto and thriving in the creator economy, for which there are not
many, if any, courses. And the live element means that the classes aren’t
canned. The platform, which takes a 10% cut of course fees, has attracted such
popular instructors as Li Jin, Anthony Pompliano, Sam Parr, and Shaan Puri. Of
the 100 classes that Maven hosted in 2021, dozens have brought in more than
$10,000 apiece.
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49
Surfline
For predicting where tomorrow’s waves will be breaking

49
Since it launched in 1985 as a pay-per-call wave-forecasting service, Surfline
has built a reputation for delivering subscription-based surf reports, which are
now online. But Surfline is still cresting and propelling its passionate surfing
community forward. The company unveiled in 2021 a new wave-forecasting engine
constructed from the ground up that leverages advanced AI and machine learning.
The engine performs more than a quarter of a trillion calculations each day,
enabling Surfline to project where waves will arise, how they will travel, and
when they will arrive at the beach. The company also incorporates observations
of the sea’s surface taken from satellites to fine-tune these forecasts. Once
Surfline understands where waves are tracking, it uses a machine-learning system
trained with 35 years of its own ocean observations to anticipate how they will
transform into surf in the lineup. As a result, when the International Surfing
Association needed to predict wave conditions around Tokyo during the Summer
Olympics in 2021—the sport made its debut during the games—it tapped Surfline.
“We build products for ocean enthusiasts,” says CEO Kyle Laughlin. “But those
ocean enthusiasts also use those products to solve bigger problems related to
climate change or to help mitigate risk.” The California state parks department,
for example, is using Surfline to forecast coastal erosion patterns, and the
Australian state of New South Wales uses the platform to predict conditions that
increase the risk of drowning along beaches.
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50
World of Wonder
For working it better—and globally

50
“Drag is an art form that exists in every culture,” says Fenton Bailey,
cofounder of World of Wonder (WOW), the production company behind RuPaul’s Drag
Race. “It’s like [these countries are] sitting on a secret, and they don’t know
what they’ve got.” In response, WOW expanded Drag Race in 2021 to Australia,
Italy, and Spain, giving it 13 versions worldwide in addition to the U.S.
franchise. Bailey, cofounder Randy Barbato, and host RuPaul Charles have done
more than create a platform to share distinct styles of drag with the world.
They have also proved that audiences can’t resist the chance to compare all
those styles, which they can now do in one place: World of Wonder’s premium
streaming site, WOW Presents Plus, whose subscriber total grew 134% in 2021.
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Contributors: Alice Alves, Marjorie Backman, Jeff Beer, Nate Berg, Joe
Berkowitz, Jill Bernstein, Adam Bluestein, Lauren Bulbin, Morgan Clendaniel, Amy
Farley, Yasmin Gagne, Bobbie Gossage, Jeanne Graves, Michael Grothaus, Celine
Grouard, Elise Hannum, Ainsley Harris, Julia Herbst, KC Ifeanyi, Beth Johnson,
Charissa Jones, Stirling Kelso, Sophie Kobylinski, Nicole LaPorte, David Lidsky,
Connie Lin, Harry McCracken, Steven Melendez, Zlati Meyer, Pavithra Mohan, April
Mokwa, Jared Newman, Adele Peters, Clint Rainey, Ruth Reader, David Salazar,
Daniel Salo, Maja Saphir, Chelsea Schiff, Erin Schulte, Katharine Schwab,
Elizabeth Segran, Mark Sullivan, Kristin Toussaint, Talib Visram, Mark Wilson,
Amy Wong, Jay Woodruff, Christopher Zara

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