Illumina tops MIT ‘smartest’ companies ranking; Apple, Facebook dissed
Apple (AAPL) didn’t make MIT’s “smartest companies” list, but emerging smartphone rival Xiaomi did. Gene mapper Illumina (ILMN) is tops among smartest companies, says the university, followed by electric car maker Tesla Motors (TSLA); Google (GOOGL); Samsung, another Apple rival; and cloud software provider Salesforce.com (CRM). How do editors at MIT’s Massachusetts Technology Review explain the rankings, which also pass over Facebook (FB)? Here’s how: “Familiar names such as Apple and Facebook aren’t on this list because reputation doesn’t matter. We’re highlighting where important innovations are happening right now,” wrote executive editor Brian Bergstein. “We didn’t count patents or Ph.D.s; instead, we asked whether a company had made strides in the past year that will define its field. The biggest of these strides happened at Illumina, which is driving down the price of DNA sequencing to levels that will change the practice of medicine.” Unlike the trailblazing iPhone, the…