Autodesk exemplifies many of the companies in this year’s BusinessWeek 50, our 13th annual ranking of the best-performing companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. While each list invariably includes companies that rode the wave of powerful industry cycles—such as this year’s four energy companies—many more, like Autodesk, earned their spot in the BW 50 as innovators. They created products or services dramatically better and cheaper than anything offered by rivals. «These companies are what I call the ‘disrupters’ of the economy,» says Harvard Business School professor Clayton H. Christensen, an innovation expert. Autodesk and its cutting-edge design software, for example, have helped the makers of everything from appliances to cars to prosthetic limbs take on entrenched rivals with greater resources.
This year’s BusinessWeek 50 is chock-full of companies that changed the rules of engagement in their industries. At Nucor (NUE) (No. 20), experimental technologies and cutting-edge compensation revolutionized steel manufacturing—and may help explain why the company is holding up despite tough times. IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) (No. 17) and its electronic futures market brought greater price transparency to energy trading, and the company is now blazing a new trail by launching one of the first clearinghouses for complex credit default swaps. Occidental Petroleum (OXY) (No. 43) has relied on advanced technology to wring more production out of its oil fields in Texas and is now doing the same in Libya. Laparoscopic tools from Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) (No. 41) have shortened the recovery period for many surgery patients and could in time dramatically reduce the number of beds the nation’s surgical hospitals need. «This technology has potentially profound implications for the health-care system,» says Intuitive Chairman and CEO Lonnie M. Smith.