KONE Corporation, press release, September 2, 2016
KONE, a global leader in the lift and escalator industry, has been ranked as one of the world's most innovative companies by business magazine Forbes. It is the sixth year running that KONE has made the world's most innovative companies list, inside the top 100. This year, KONE ranked 56th making it the 8th most innovative company in Europe. KONE is also the only lift and escalator company featured on the list.
"Once again, we are proud to have been recognized for our innovation by Forbes. Changes in market dynamics and technologies mean we have established new areas for growth and built new partnerships," explains KONE Chief Technology Officer Tomio Pihkala. "Urbanization and digitalization are important drivers for our innovation activities, but other examples where we want to create value for customers and wider society include setting up a new Technology and Innovation unit as well as announcing cooperation with companies including IBM."
Innovation has been at the core of KONE's business for decades. Some of the breakthrough innovations include KONE UltraRope, a high-rise elevator hoisting technology, and the KONE family of People Flow Intelligence solutions, which makes navigation through buildings smoother and smarter.
Forbes magazine's ranking is based on a metric called the "Innovation Premium": the difference between a company's market capitalization and its net present value of cash flows from existing businesses.
The list of the world's most innovative companies can be seen on Forbes' website.
Previous press releases are available at www.kone.com/press including:
February 19, 2016: KONE joins forces with IBM for IoT cloud services and advanced analytics technologies
17.9.2015: KONE establishes a new Technology and Innovation unit
For further information, please contact:
Liisa Kivelä, Director, Communications, KONE Corporation, tel. +358 204 75 4330, media@kone.com
About KONE
At KONE, our mission is to improve the flow of urban life. As a global leader in the elevator and escalator industry, KONE provides elevators, escalators and automatic building doors, as well as solutions for maintenance and modernization to add value to buildings throughout their life cycle. Through more effective People Flow®, we make people's journeys safe, convenient and reliable, in taller, smarter buildings. In 2015, KONE had annual net sales of EUR 8.6 billion, and at the end of the year close to 50,000 employees. KONE class B shares are listed on the Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd. in Finland.
www.kone.com