While there is a large amount of innovation going on in start-ups, Fortune 500 (F500) companies are still responsible for a large part of the impactful innovation driving the economy, if not directly through acquisitions of start-ups. In many company lists published in the media, the large majority of companies been cited are still large companies, independently if they are F500 or not. Though US dominance might be disputed because of the way China has been growing, the US is still considered the world’s number 1 economy and has been so since 1871.
We chose top 50 for practical reasons, though some have expressed that this is a very US centric list which does not express reality of design executive presence in large corporations throughout the world, we have not done that comparison yet. These companies also play a major role on the global stage, with more than a fifth of companies on the Fortune Global 500 coming from the US.