FAST COMPANY’S ANNUAL RANKING OF THE WORLD’S MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES COVERS 58 INDUSTRIES AND SECTORS, FROM ADVERTISING TO VIDEO.
Welcome to the future. For years, Fast Company has been tracking ideas and technologies that promise to transform the world but seem just out of reach. As this year’s list of the Most Innovative Companies illustrates, they’re now firmly in our grasp. There’s generative AI, of course, which is being built atop the chips and platforms of this year’s No. 1 company, Nvidia, and popularized by the likes of OpenAI and Microsoft. Emerging AI companies are also making their mark, whether that’s by managing the risks around the technology (Credo AI) or creating an entirely new way to search the web (Perplexity). But the science fiction made real doesn’t stop there. Over the past year, Vertex Pharmaceuticals brought the first CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing treatment to market, KinetX helped navigate a spacecraft on a 4.4 billion-mile mission to land on an asteroid and return home, and Climeworks used direct air capture to scrub carbon from the atmosphere. Not-for-profit 4 Day Week Global, meanwhile, has done the seemingly impossible: convince companies around the world to adopt a shorter workweek. While new technologies fuel innovation, our rankings of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies—and the 58 lists that chronicle forward-looking organizations in sectors from advertising to video—showcase deeply human stories. Taylor Swift Productions, Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment, Sphere Entertainment, and Mattel have demonstrated the power of collective, in-person experiences. The National Women’s Soccer League is taking sports fandom to new levels. The United Auto Workers is pushing companies to center labor even as they pursue innovation. And everywhere, companies are finding new ways to connect to culture and delight consumers, from Taco Bell and J.M. Smucker’s embrace of playful foods to Chess.com’s efforts to turn a centuries-old game into must-see reality TV. The challenges facing business and the planet are immense, but the process of selecting these winners gave us optimism. (Here’s our methodology for creating the list.) We hope you are similarly inspired.
Queen of Raw
Meet the startup trying to bring Shein into the circular economy
For helping brands from Cotopaxi to Shein access deadstock fabrics, Queen of Raw is one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in retail for 2024.
Today, nearly $120 billion of fabric sits unused in warehouses, or gets consigned to landfills. Queen of Raw is putting that to use, connecting sellers of unused fabric with buyers via its platform marketplace for factories, retailers, and brands.
Queen of Raw also offers a monthly subscription service—called Materia Mx—that maps companies’ supply chains so they can work to minimize how much waste they produce by identifying where they are creating excess fabrics. Through this, the company has helped more than 150,000 companies save one billion gallons of water and diverted 500 tons of textiles from landfills since it launched in 2014.
In 2023, the company partnered with controversial ultra-fast-fashion manufacturer Shein to help it source excess fabric from other brands that Shein can then use to make new clothes. Though some critics have called the partnership a public relations exercise for Shein, which has an enormous environmental impact, the project could repurpose one million yards of excess fabric. The deal demonstrates the scale at which Queen of Raw can now operate. Other clients include outdoor gear company Cotopaxi and Ralph Lauren, which worked with the company to rescue 11.8 metric tons of unused material in China and Vietnam last year.
Explore the full 2024 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 606 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the firms making the biggest impact across 58 categories, including advertising, artificial intelligence, design, sustainability, and more.
