From The Editor.

this year. These Top 10 lists by category begin on page 74, and you can read about the honorees at fastcompany.com. All this is the thrilling part.

Here’s the strange part. While we were painstakingly curating the list and learning about innovations at big companies that have been around forever (Mcdonald’s, Tiffany & Co., Ford, Disney), upstarts that have rapidly innovated their way to cultural relevance (Giant Spoon, Mschf, Mrbeast), and some inspiring institutions that technically aren’t “companies” at all (NASA, Workers United, Purdue University), the business world was going through massive upheaval, especially in the tech sector. With the notable exception of Apple, virtually every big tech company—including MIC honorees Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft (page 24)—has recently laid off thousands of employees. A couple days before I wrote this, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who shed an eye-popping 13% of his workforce in November, declared 2023 the “year of efficiency.” Wall Street loved this, and Meta’s stock immediately soared 20%.

This speaks to a theme that runs through this year’s list: The differences that had long separated tech companies from the rest of the business world have all but disappeared. As older companies are renewed through digital transformation, they borrow more and more from the operating culture of Silicon Valley. As tech companies discover “efficiency”—fewer perks, a leaner workforce, prioritizing profits over growth—they become like the legacy companies they once boasted about overtaking.

Every company is a tech company nowadays. Every tech company is, after all, just a company. The only thing that makes any of them truly stand out? That elusive, borderline magical quality we celebrate in every issue, but especially this one: innovation.