Auto Industry Accounts for 10% of Top 100 Global Innovators

Three carmakers—Honda, Nissan and Toyota—and seven predominately automotive suppliers were included in this year’s Thomson Reuters' list of the top 100 global innovators.

Suppliers categorized in the automotive group by Thomson Reuters included Aisin Seki, Bridgestone, Johnson Controls, JTEKT, Valeo, Yamaha and Yazaki.

Several conglomerates that make a mix of automotive and nonautomotive products also made the top 100. They include 3M, BASF, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Freescale, Honeywell, Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic, Qualcomm and Toray. Joining them are tech giants such as Apple and Google that are beginning to develop automotive products.

Honda and Toyota were two of the 40 companies to make the list in all five years it has been tabulated. Asian companies accounted for 44 of top 100 spots this year, followed by 36 North American companies and 20 European companies.

To be selected, a company must receive a minimum of 100 patents for unique products over the last five years. Ratings consider how many regions in which a company filed patent applications and how many times each patent was cited by third-party organizations.

Thomson Reuters says companies who made the list tended to outperform other leading companies across a variety of financial metrics.