Saturday, February 8, 2025

Fortune Magazine/Boston Consulting Group: "The Future 50" Companies

The list comes out in December but we are usually a couple months behind when we link.

From Fortune, December 2, 2024: 

The Future 50: The companies most likely to adapt, thrive, and grow

The global economy in 2024 is a tale of two forces: optimism sparked by falling interest rates, and the uncertainty caused by geopolitical unrest. As companies focus on sustainable growth, such a volatile environment inevitably tests their resilience.

Since 2017, Fortune and Boston Consulting Group have teamed up to identify our annual list of Future 50 companies—those built to withstand exactly such volatility. (See the 2024 list here.) Future 50 firms promise outsize future growth while delivering exceptional shareholder returns. At BCG, we call these companies highly vital; they have the capacity to adapt, innovate, and grow amid technological, economic, and political change. This list is designed to be both a tool for investors and a guide for business leaders seeking partners and role models.

This year’s ranking is our first to include not just public companies but also privately held, pre-IPO companies with over $1 billion in funding. The Future 50 now better reflects the universe of the world’s most vital companies, which is particularly valuable as venture-backed and private-equity-funded firms increasingly stay private for longer. We’ve also updated our methodology to include new data sources that allow us to assess the scalability of a firm’s technology stack and the composition of its growth and innovation teams. In all, we evaluated 3,000 candidates to generate the final ranking.

This year’s Future 50 honorees have seen four-times-greater sales growth and three-times-greater total shareholder returns over the past five years than the average company in our sample group—hopefully presaging similar results to come. Indeed, the Future 50 has historically highlighted companies whose growth would later launch them onto the Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 lists. Nvidia, for one, made its Global 500 debut this year, following five Future 50 appearances (this year is its sixth). Intuit, ServiceNow, and Workday have similarly been featured here before laddering up to the Fortune 500....

The List

The Future 50 Ranking (2024)

....MUCH MORE