Of all the questions we’re asked by corporate executives trying to unpack our data, the one we get most often is, “How can my company be more innovative—you know, like those in tech?”
In light of our latest research, what they might want to ask instead is, “How can my company be more innovative, like those in consumer staples?”
Our findings are derived from a statistical model that was developed by the Drucker Institute and serves as the foundation of the Management Top 250, an annual ranking produced in partnership with The Wall Street Journal. Anchored in the ideas and ideals of the late management scholar Peter Drucker, it gauges a company’s “effectiveness”—defined, to use Mr. Drucker words, as “doing the right things well.” The 2020 list was published in December.
In all, we examined 886 large, publicly traded companies last year through the lens of 33 indicators that fall into five categories: customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility and financial strength.
To construct our ranking, corporations are compared in each of the five areas, as well as in their overall effectiveness, through standardized scores with a typical range of 0 to 100 and a mean of 50.
