At our team at the IMD business school, we’ve been tracking how likely a firm is to successfully move toward a new knowledge discipline in its effort to prepare for the future. We introduced the Future Readiness Indicator to measure how prepared for a changing future companies are sector by sector. Currently we covered the Future Readiness Indicator for five industries: Automotive, Fashion, Finance, Pharmaceutical, and Technology.
We have included the top key players by revenues in each industry. The ranking is based on seven main factors*: (1) financial fundamentals, (2) investors’ expectations of future growth, (3) business diversity, (4) employee diversity/ESG, (5) research and development, (6) early results of innovation efforts, and (7) cash and debt. These seven main factors, which carry the same weight in the overall result, comprise 32* variables.
All of our variables are hard data; that is, they are publicly available on company websites, annual reports, press releases, news stories, and special reports on topics such as corporate social responsibility. For press counts data, we consulted Factiva, a global news database that covers various premium sources, and counted the number of press releases on each trending topic previously identified in this industry for the past three years (e.g., 2018-2020). The data was also supplemented by third-party data sources from CrunchBase, which specializes in the topic of corporate ventures, Espacenet, which specialized in patent search, and Google trends.
To calculate the Indicator, first, we collected historical data for each company. Then we performed calculations for each variable (e.g., 3Y CAGR) before we standardized the criteria data. Next, we aggregated variables to the main factors and then determined the overall ranking. For the purpose of comparison, we ranked each company from 1 (best) to n (worst, n=sample size) on a scale of 1 to 100.
In the spirit of openness that’ll encourage research collaboration, you can find out more about our variables for industries like automotive, financial services, fashion, as well as technology below.
Please contact us if you would like to learn more about our methodology.
*note: factors are subject to change by industry, thus the number of variables may vary across industries.
Automotive
- Operating revenue (cagr)
- Profit rate (EBITDA)
- Operating revenue per employee
- Recent earning trend
- EPS rating
- P/E ratio
- Price to Book Value
- Market Capitalization (cagr)
- Enterprise value /EBITDA
- Press count on "ventures"
- Number of acquisitions
- Number of investments
- % of international sales
- % of women employees
- % of women in Top management team
- CEO demography
- Headquarter competitiveness
- ESG score
- R&D intensity
- R&D intensity (cagr)
- R&D expenses
- R&D expenses (cagr)
- Number of patents
- Press count on "autonomous vehicles"
- Press count on "EVs"
- Press count on "connected cars"
- Press count on "sharing mobility"
- Quick ratio
- Cash to total assets
- Gearing ratio
- Net operating cash flow trend
- Operating cash flow / revenue
Financial Services
- Operating revenue (cagr)
- Profit rate
- Earning trend
- AUM cagr*
- EPS rating
- P/E ratio
- Price-to-book value**
- Market capitalization (cagr)
- EV/EBITDA
- % of women in Top management team
- % of women managers
- CEO demography
- Headquarters competitiveness
- ESG score
- AUM per employee*
- Operating revenue per employee
- Profit per employee
- Operating expense ratio
- Press count on "blockchain"
- Press count on "mobile services"
- Press count on "AI"
- Press count on "cyber-security"
- Press count on "APIs"
- Number of investments
- Number of acquisitions
- Number of patents
- Cash to total assets
- Total debt to equity
- Operating cash flow / Revenue
Fashion
- Operating revenue (cagr)
- Profit rate
- Earining trend
- P/E ratio
- Market capitalization (cagr)
- Etreprise value /EBITDA
- % of women in Top management team
- % of women managers
- ESG score
- CEO demography
- Headquarters competitiveness
- Operating revenue per employee
- Number of acquisition
- Number of investments
- Press count on "sustainability"
- Press count on "omnichannel/digital"
- Press count on "consumer centric"
- Press count on "collaborations"
- APP rating in US Apple store
- App rating in Play store
- Brand value
- Google trends
- YoY Google trends
- Number of Instagram followers
- Number of YouTube subscribers
- Number of Facebook likes
- Quick ratio
- Cash to total assets
- Total debt to equity
- Net operating cash flow trend
Technology
- Operating revenue (cagr)
- Profit rate
- Operating revenue per employee
- Earining trend
- P/E ratio
- Market capitalization (cagr)
- Enterprise value /EBITDA
- Press count on "corporate venturing"
- Number of acquisitions
- Number of investments
- % of international sales
- % of revenue from non-core business
- % of women in Top management team
- % of women managers
- ESG score
- CEO demography
- Headquarters competitiveness
- R&D intensity
- R&D intensity (cagr)
- R&D expenses
- R&D expenses (cagr)
- Number of patents
- Press count "AI"
- Press count on "cloud services"
- Press count on "SaaS"
- Press count on "data privacy"
- Press count on "API"
- Press count on "cybersecurity"
- Press count on "IoT"
- Quick ratio
- Cash to total assets
- Total debt to equity
- Net operating cash flow trend
Pharmaceutical
- Operating revenue (cagr)
- Profit rate
- Operating revenue per employee
- Earining trend
- P/E ratio
- Price to booking value
- Market capitalization (cagr)
- Enterprise value /EBITDA
- Press count on "corporate venturing"
- Number of acquisitions
- Number of investments
- % of women in Top management team
- % of women managers
- ESG score
- CEO demography
- Headquarters competitiveness
- R&D intensity
- R&D intensity (cagr)
- R&D expenses
- R&D expenses (cagr)
- Number of patents
- Press count on "Digital therapeutics"
- Press count on "Personalized theraphy"
- Press count on "Real-world data"
- Quick ratio
- Cash to total assets
- Total debt to equity
- Net operating cash flow trend
- Number of registrastion
- Number of Phase1/Phase2/Phase3
- Number of therapeutic areas