Nestled in the rolling hills just north of San Francisco, Autodesk is no Silicon Valley mover and shaker.
Business Week includes Autodesk among its annual ranking of top 50 companies that are the "best in class from the 10 sectors of the Standard & Poor's index of 500 stocks."
In this year's listing, Autodesk ranks #45; in this year's Business Week article, it ranks #1 by being mentioned first -- with that rather oddly-worded introductory sentence.
The Business Week 50 (for 2009)
The rather oddly worded opening comment is a precursor to a distinctly warped view of reality further down the article;
“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.”
Some may see some truth in these comments, others rubbish; Autodesk do NOT create “products or services dramatically better and cheaper than anything offered by rivals.”
Posted by: R. Paul Waddington | Mar 30, 2009 at 03:49 PM