Agnico Eagle Mines was founded in 1957 when five small struggling silver mining companies consolidated resources to try their hands at gold mining, ultimately saving the companies and their miners’ livelihoods. Today the firm mines silver, gold, copper and zinc from sites in Canada, Finland…
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Chugai is the No. 1 Japanese pharmaceutical company for therapeutic antibody and oncology drugs. The firm’s product line includes drugs to treat cancer and viruses such as HIV, immune diseases and the flu. In addition, Chugai considers itself to be a pioneer in “personalized patient…
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One behavior demonstrated by innovative companies is a tendency to embrace change, to apply the tools of the digital revolution to drive innovation within companies that then permeates entire industries. One example of an old school company embracing new tools is Sandvik. Based in Stockholm,…
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Garmin’s is one of those stories we used to see a lot: private companies made in the USA and spawned from the fruits of federal government innovation, in this case GPS. “In the early 1970s, the DoD (Department of Defense) began creating the Global Positioning…
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Franco-Nevada is the world’s largest gold royalty and streaming company. This means the firm invests in gold and mines, but indirectly, the idea being to provide investors with exposure to gold prices and gold exploration while limiting the risks of investing directly in mining companies….
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Here we are in the dog days of summer, and the hot weather is not the only thing making us a little queasy. The darling stock market group since 2011, the Nasdaq 100 stock index, has soared a cool 20% this year and well into…
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How does a Knowledge Leader handle a global pandemic? By adapting. Consider New Zealand-based Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, a top 10 manufacturer in the global ventilator market, a company one could argue was already prepared for the unknown by its disciplined approach to investing in…
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As I write this note on a dreary Friday afternoon from Boulder, CO I am reminded of my town’s origin. Its first non-native settlers established the town 1858 as a base camp for gold and silver miners. Nestled literally at the foot of the Rockies,…
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With 30 million daily users, South Korea’s top search engine is focused not on the desktop, but rather the phones in people’s pockets, cars, city streets and shops, aiming to connect people with each other, shopping and entertainment. To do so, the firm relies on…
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What began as a breakthrough device for filtering saltwater in 1992 has – through a commitment to innovation ever since — transformed Energy Recovery Inc. into the most innovative industrials company in the world, as measured by R&D as a percent of sales. According to…
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When companies commit to investing in innovation, the results compound over time, leading them to possess deep reservoirs of knowledge. We call these companies Knowledge Leaders, and such is the case for San Diego, California-based Illumina, the world leader in DNA sequencing and the No….
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Founded in 1992 to build sensor and measurement tools for factories, farms and mines, Sweden’s Hexagon AB is at work today fusing the physical world with the digital. By integrating hard data collection with software, mobile and cloud-based technologies, this Knowledge Leader uses the tools…
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In our work studying Knowledge Leaders, there’s a common thread: highly innovative companies often exist at the intersection of global trends that demand intensive R&D efforts to solve complex problems the world has never faced before. Coincidence? We don’t think so. The global population is…
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Internet retailers are a much-watched sub-industry in the stock market for good reason: worldwide retail ecommerce is predicted to generate double-digit growth each year through 2022, reaching total sales of $3 trillion by the end of that year, according to Euromonitor. For those of us…
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In 2003, Taiwanese generic drug leader TTY Biopharm and other Taiwanese venture capital firms funded a new type of drug company. PharmaEngine was launched with the specific mission of getting to market faster with drug treatments. To reduce the time between drug discovery, the first…
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