Why: Has created a cellular network that can cope with our growing appetite for mobile data.
Key innovation: Its LightRadio architecture uses many small, efficient, and easily upgraded base stations in place of the larger, less efficient cell towers of today.
A 100-year-old networking trick could boost transmissions over telephone infrastructure.
By Christopher Mims
Why: Its high-efficiency gallium arsenide–based solar cells provide a way to lower the cost of solar power.
Key innovation: Can economically produce robust cells that use only small amounts of the expensive semiconductor.
Looking to enter a highly competitive solar market, Alta Devices hopes to use a combination of technological advances and manufacturing savvy to succeed where many others have crashed and burned.
By David Rotman
Why: The Siri virtual assistant built into the iPhone 4S demonstrates a new kind of conversational voice-operated interface.
Key innovation: Software that can interpret ambiguous sentences allows Siri to understand even casual commands.
Cloud-based speech and translation technology could allow any app to be voice-controlled.
By David Talbot
Why: A key supplier of equipment for making solar cells, it is helping to lower the cost of solar power.
Key innovation: A new manufacturing system allows solar producers to increase the output and efficiency of their cells.
A more precise manufacturing method will help as electronics shrink ever smaller.
By Katherine Bourzac
Why: By reducing the electricity demands of data centers, ARM is making cloud computing cheaper.
Key innovation: Its powerful server processors use an architecture originally developed for energy-conscious mobile devices.
The processors are slower, but they use much less energy—a huge boon for those who run massive data centers.
By Cyrus Farivar
Why: Its systems help doctors and patients with the morass of medical records and billing paperwork.
Key innovation: Developed cloud-based software for electronic health records and practice management.
The CEO of Athenahealth is using cloud computing to make the complexities of health care less oppressive.
By Jason Pontin
Why: The company is developing cheaper nuclear reactors.
Key innovation: A simplified modular reactor design decreases size and cost.
Fluor, the engineering giant, is investing $30 million to rescue the struggling startup NuScale.
By Kevin Bullis
Why: Its new infrastructure extends the effective range of electric vehicles.
Key innovation: Has designed and installed battery swap stations, a charging network, and a central control station to manage a fleet of electric cars in Israel.
Better Place's switching stations allow electric cars to swap batteries during long trips.
By Matthew Kalman
Why: It mines social-media sites to gauge the audience response to television shows and advertising.
Key innovation: Natural-language analysis of comments on social-media sites provides fine-grained information about audience size and sentiment.
The surging social-media response to TV promises to shape future programming and advertising trends.
By David Talbot
Why: Using human iPS cells in drug screening could accelerate the development of new therapies.
Key innovation: Its new product derived from iPS cells is meant for use in vascular targeted drug discovery, tissue regeneration, and life science research.
What can heart cells generated from my blood tell me about my risk for disease—and about what drugs I should take if I get sick?
By David Ewing Duncan
Why: New sequencing projects that the company announced in 2011 include one aimed at predicting preterm births and another that will sequence cancer genomes.
Key innovation: A computational platform allows it to assemble DNA sequences into genomes more accurately.
Start-up Complete Genomics reveals three new human genomes.
By Emily Singer
Why: Speeding up production of digitally animated movies will also benefit gaming and augmented reality.
Key innovation: Software that can take maximum advantage of a multicore processor allows animators to create scenes in minutes instead of hours.
Remote rendering lets big-budget animators add more effects and opens doors to smaller studios.
By Kate Greene
Why: Its technology makes it easier for users to sync and share files on smart phones, laptops, and desktops.
Key innovation: Cloud-based systems are the basis for a consumer-focused service that works across multiple platforms.
A new cloud-storage service from the search giant steps on the toes of startups like Dropbox and opens a new front against Apple and Microsoft.
By Tom Simonite
Why: Using lightweight parts will decrease the fuel consumption of the company’s aircraft and make its satellites cheaper to launch.
Key innovation: Redesigning select parts to take advantage of the capabilities of 3-D printers has cut their weight in half.
The technology could be used to make parts that perform better and cost less.
By Kevin Bullis
Why: The social network has become the means by which many online users communicate, get news, and find entertainment.
Key innovation: New features automatically integrate casual online activity, such as listening to music or reading newspaper articles, into the social sphere.
For all its valuation, the social network is just another ad-supported site. Without an earth-changing idea, it will collapse and take down the Web.
By Michael Wolff
Why: It is reducing the cost of utility-scale photovoltaic installations.
Key innovation: First Solar constrains costs with vertical integration of everything from plant construction to the manufacture of high-efficiency cadmium telluride cells.
Cheap panels from China have forced the U.S. solar giant to lay off workers and close factories, but the company says it sees a way out of its mess.
By Kevin Bullis
Why: Its new diagnostics exploit a growing understanding of the molecular basis of cancer.
Key innovation: It has developed a comprehensive cancer diagnostic test and is partnering with pharmaceutical companies to use the test in drug development.
Foundation Medicine is offering a test that helps oncologists choose drugs targeted to the genetic profile of a patient's tumor cells. Has personalized cancer treatment finally arrived?
By Adrienne Burke
Why: By building flexible and efficient natural-gas power plants, GE is making it easier for utilities to use intermittent sources of renewable energy.
Key innovation: Gas turbines based on jet engines allow power plants to quickly increase or decrease their electricity generation to compensate for variations in wind or solar power.
With 3-D printing, manufacturers can make existing products more efficiently—and create ones that weren't possible before.
By David H. Freedman
Why: It is optimizing wind farms for conditions in China.
Key innovation: Wind turbines are specially adapted for the high altitudes and low wind speeds that characterize Chinese wind resources.
Breezy tidal flats offer green power on the doorstep of China's bustling seaboard.
By Peter Fairley
Why: Despite its lukewarm performance in social media, Google’s willingness to move into new areas shows it can still be an agenda-setter.
Key innovation: The introduction of Android 4.0 (also known as “Ice Cream Sandwich”), with its crowd-pleasing interface, confirms the company’s position as a major force in mobile computing.
Google's ambitious book-scanning program is foundering in the courts. Now a Harvard-led group is launching its own sweeping effort to put our literary heritage online. Will the Ivy League succeed where Silicon Valley failed?
By Nicholas Carr
Why: It is using telemedicine techniques to deliver health care to rural India.
Key innovation: Its network of eight centers brings advanced telemedicine systems to patients.
A telemedicine company brings $1 virtual checkups to poor countries.
By Emily Singer
Why: Its flexible artificial-intelligence systems have the potential to assist people in many areas, such as health care.
Key innovation: Watson, which demonstrated its capability by beating skilled human quiz-show players, learned by automatically digesting text from books and websites, an ability that could be adapted to any area of knowledge.
After letting its employees use their own phones and tablets for work, the company confronted a flood of insecure apps from the open Web.
By Brian Bergstein
Why: By reducing the cost of diagnostic tests, it has allowed the monitoring of more disease markers.
Key innovation: Its synthetic antibodies replace more expensive antibodies widely used in diagnostics.
Genomics pioneer Leroy Hood says a coming revolution in medicine will bring enormous new opportunities.
By Emily Singer
Why: Has reinvented transistor architecture as it continues to shrink the size of devices on a chip.
Key innovation: Its 3-D transistors will be used in a new generation of 22-nanometer chips.
Why: Makes fuel and chemicals from the carbon monoxide produced by processes such as steelmaking.
Key innovation: Genetically engineered organisms turn the gas into ethanol and other useful chemicals.
Why: Lowering the cost of DNA sequencing opens the door to more genetically targeted treatments and diagnostics.
Key innovation: Its benchtop sequencer can sequence a human genome in one day, at a cost of just $1,000 per genome.
Ion Torrent introduced its new tabletop sequencer at CES this week.
By Erica Westly
Why: By using virtual computer networks rather than hardwired systems to connect cloud servers, it could make the cloud more secure and reliable.
Key innovation: Its software takes over the functions of network hardware, resulting in a distributed system of components that can swiftly respond to changes in workload.
Why: Allows users to access applications too powerful for their hardware to support.
Key innovation: Its video streaming technology minimizes lag so that applications running on a server appear to be running locally.
Handhelds can access top-end PC games and other software remotely.
By Tom Simonite
Why: Its three-dimensional artificial tissue structures can be used for drug testing and are likely to find therapeutic applications.
Key innovation: A printing process methodically deposits layers of cells and gel material to build up new tissues.
Organovo's 3-D printer creates human tissues that could help speed drug discovery.
By Lauren Gravitz
Why: Its software can extract common threads from mountains of data, potentially yielding leads for intelligence agencies and police forces.
Key innovation: The software, which can begin analyzing a new data set without extensive preparation, can handle many different types of input, including data from military operations and financial transactions.
Why: Online social connections and shared data offer a new way to improve the understanding and treatment of disease.
Key innovation: Published a peer-reviewed study, based on data volunteered by site users, that countered the results of a clinical trial assessing the effects of lithium on ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Healthrageous offers tools to track progress toward health goals, but its most valuable asset may be data about you.
By Emily Singer
Why: The Mirasol display for mobile devices provides full color even in bright sunlight and uses a fraction as much power as today’s phone and tablet displays.
Key innovation: Technology modeled on a butterfly’s wing creates a bright image by reflecting and amplifying particular wavelengths of ambient light.
Qualcomm uses the mechanism that gives color to butterfly wings to make low-power, full-color e-reader displays.
By Tom Simonite
Why: Its new drugs target genetic mutations in cancer cells.
Key innovation: Developed a lung-cancer drug and a diagnostic test for the mutation that makes some cancers susceptible to the drug.
What can heart cells generated from my blood tell me about my risk for disease—and about what drugs I should take if I get sick?
By David Ewing Duncan
Why: Has deployed mobile health services over Kenya’s cellular network.
Key innovation: Through cell phones, the company offers services such as first-aid recommendations for subscribers.
Nairobi startup's health app surges; Safaricom gives subscribers links to experts for two cents a minute.
By David Talbot
Why: Its high-energy batteries, which will first appear in consumer devices, could make electric cars cheaper and improve their range.
Key innovation: Making batteries without the flammable liquid found in conventional electric-car batteries means they can store more energy.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
By David Rotman
Why: Samsung is an increasingly major player in consumer electronics, from iPhone components to new phones, tablets, and OLED TVs; it was the world’s top seller of smart phones in 2011.
Key innovation: Tightly integrated design and manufacturing processes result in clever, efficiently produced designs.
New electronics enable a jump in performance in a prototype display made by Samsung.
By Katherine Bourzac
Why: It has learned to exploit oil resources that were previously impractical to tap.
Key innovation: Has drilled and started production at the world’s deepest offshore well.
A new heater cable lowers the cost of separating oil-like fluid from rock.
By Tyler Hamilton
Why: Its cheaper turbines and installation techniques will make offshore wind plants more affordable.
Key innovation: Gearless turbines and streamlined manufacturing lower capital costs and improve reliability.
The engineering giant likes the predictability of marine power—which can be "calculated for centuries in advance."
By Peter Fairley
Why: Its catalytic process is able to convert cheap and abundant natural gas into ethylene, a commodity chemical used to make plastic.
Key innovation: Developed a family of catalysts that selectively cause methane to react to form ethylene.
Why: Managing natural resources, planning humanitarian missions, and assessing construction projects could all become easier thanks to Skybox’s satellites, which will take more frequent images at lower cost.
Key innovation: Its small satellites cost less to build and launch than traditional ones, and its automated analytic software makes it easier for customers to extract useful information.
Why: Its spacecraft and rockets could replace expensive government vehicles as a way into orbit.
Key innovation: The reusable Dragon cargo capsule is set to become the first private spacecraft to visit the International Space Station.
Such a rocket would dramatically reduce the costs of spaceflight—a promise NASA's space shuttle failed to deliver on.
By Jeff Foust
Why: Its digital music subscription service has succeeded where others have failed or had only lackluster results.
Key innovation: Spotify has negotiated with record labels to allow users access to a large library of music one track at a time; they can even download music for offline use.
Via an ordinary webcam, a startup puts simple gestural control in the palm of your hand.
By Rachel Metz
Why: Small businesses benefit from its simple mobile payment system.
Key innovation: Square has moved beyond its initial credit card reader for smart phones; a new app lets you automatically open a tab with a merchant on entering a store.
The creator of Twitter and cofounder of Square talks about the nature of good design.
By Jason Pontin
Why: Has developed a low-cost way of making better silicon solar cells.
Key innovation: Its new panels are more efficient because they reflect less light and use thinner electrodes that block less light.
Suntech Power has developed a better way to make high-grade silicon wafers.
By Kevin Bullis
Why: Its processors combine the flexibility of software with the efficiency of hardware.
Key innovation: Chip designs that can reconfigure themselves faster than existing reprogrammable designs make smaller, cheaper chips possible.
Changing chip design on demand could allow TVs and other devices to upgrade their own hardware.
By Tom Simonite
Why: A manufacturing process specifically designed for smart-phone and tablet processors will produce chips that increase computing performance without guzzling power.
Key innovation: Its new materials avoid the leakage of current that saps the energy efficiency of other high-performance processors with very small features.
China may finally have a processor to power a homegrown supercomputer.
By Christopher Mims
Why: Microblogging has become a ubiquitous adjunct to major events, from earthquakes to revolutions.
Key innovation: A redesigned mobile application encourages users to discover content relevant to them while remaining within the ambit of Twitter rather than turning to third-party systems.
The surging social-media response to TV promises to shape future programming and advertising trends.
By David Talbot
Why: Has used high-speed methods to find materials that improve the performance of batteries.
Key innovation: Identified a pair of materials that could increase energy density by 25 percent in batteries for cars and portable electronics.
Startup creates an automated process that could speed the development of cheaper batteries for electric cars.
By Kevin Bullis
Why: WiTricity is making it more convenient to charge electric cars.
Key innovation: Its system can recharge a battery pack wirelessly.
Charging systems that send power farther through the air will soon be on sale.
By Kevin Bullis
Why: Social gaming has dramatically expanded the demographic appeal of computer games and created new business models for game companies.
Key innovation: Zynga has mastered the art of giving away games and then persuading players to make in-game purchases of virtual goods, sometimes adding up to many times the typical purchase price of a game.
A new game for Facebook, Adventure World, is larger, more interactive, and more strategic than anything Zynga has made before.
By Erica Naone
What is a TR50 company? It is a business whose innovations force other businesses to alter their strategic course. TR50 members are nominated by Technology Review’s editors, who look for companies that over the last year have demonstrated original and valuable technology, are bringing that technology to market at a significant scale, and are clearly influencing their competitors.
Eighteen of the companies we selected for the 2011 TR50 continue to meet those criteria, and return this year (seven are making their third appearance). Of course, that means that 32 companies we picked for last year’s TR50 are no longer on the list.
Sometimes companies fall off the list because of a decline in the prospects of an entire sector. For example, despite being strongly represented in 2010 and 2011, advanced-biofuels companies are absent this year. This sector has generally failed to scale up production to a level that can begin to make serious inroads into the use of conventional oil. While its technology still has potential, it currently has little influence on the direction of the fuel or transportation industries.
In other cases, individual companies lose the vision that made them worthy of the TR50. One such example is Netflix, which we selected last year for piggybacking a video-on-demand service onto its existing DVD-by-mail subscriptions. Netflix had already disrupted the business model of brick-and-mortar video rental stores and cleverly maneuvered to prevent itself from being disrupted in turn by streaming video technology. But later in 2011, the company tried to split the streaming side of its operations from its DVD service, an ill-fated decision that provoked public ridicule and the loss of hundreds of thousands of subscribers before the company reversed course. Suddenly, Netflix wasn’t able to clearly dictate its own agenda, let alone that of the entertainment industry.
With still other companies, it’s not the vision but the execution that is lacking. If the selection process for the TR50 had occurred a few months earlier, we probably would have included Amazon on the list (as we had the previous two years), citing the release of the Kindle Fire. The Fire initially looked like a serious competitor to the iPad for dominance of the tablet computing market. Even though it had fewer functions than the iPad, it cost much less and made clever use of Amazon’s extensive cloud infrastructure. But as consumers racked up more daily experience with the device, more than a few of them found their initial satisfaction turning to disappointment. Many of the things the Fire was supposed to do, it didn’t do well enough; customers complained of connectivity problems or difficulties with the touch-screen navigation. Although the company has released software patches that it claims will address most users’ concerns, launching a product that frustrated many customers showed that Amazon is still a challenger rather than a leader when it comes to merging consumer electronics with the cloud.
Finally, some companies fell off the list simply because they were crowded out by others with big new ideas. Some of these newcomers are shaking up established fields. Dropbox has made its mark in the previously sleepy world of online storage. Babcock and Wilcox is developing small reactors that could change the regulatory and economic calculus of nuclear power. And Athenahealth is reinventing health insurance as an exercise in information technology.
Still others are breaking into new territory. PatientsLikeMe is transforming the notion of how a clinical trial must be conducted by encouraging patients with chronic conditions to share intimate details online. EADS is turning 3-D printing (originally created for the production of prototypes) into a full-scale manufacturing technology. And LanzaTech is turning carbon monoxide emissions into fuel.
As a group, the TR50 companies represent our best judgment of the commercial innovations most likely to change lives around the world. Do you agree with us? Which companies that didn’t make it onto the list should have, and which do you think didn’t deserve a place? Let us know.
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