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September 14, 1998

Where To Find Innovators

he InformationWeek 500, now in its 10th year, continues to evolve its mission and methodology. Rather than rank companies on the basis of size or spending, the InformationWeek 500 is determined by how IT organizations innovate in their use of IT. Size is a factor, because spending fuels the deployment of new technology solutions. But, as every IT manager knows, simply throwing money at problems doesn't create business value. And focusing on IT outlays might preclude seeking creative solutions aimed at reducing administrative costs.

So, instead of conducting a hardware census of PCs, nodes, speeds, and feeds, InformationWeek editors sought to identify and reward companies that demonstrate a pattern of technological, procedural, and organizational innovation. Only parent organizations in the United States with at least $1 billion in annual revenue are invited to participate in the research. In some instances, smaller companies answered our questionnaire on behalf of a billion-dollar parent. As a result of this months-long research effort, IT organizations are able to benchmark their performance against leaders in their respective fields.

500 Methodology
chart

InformationWeek 500 companies were awarded gold, silver, and bronze citations for their early adoption and creative use of technologies such as knowledge management, electronic commerce, enterprise resource planning, and homegrown applications. Citations were awarded on a curve, with the highest third in each category receiving gold medals.

The editors of InformationWeek wish to thank and congratulate the distinguished members of this year's InformationWeek 500. Without the cooperation of senior IT executives at these leading IT organizations, it wouldn't be possible to generate in-depth research about these organizations' innovative use of IT.

We also wish to thank the premier research partners that aided InformationWeek in this project. Hoover's Inc. (www.hoovers.com) in Austin, Texas, supplied financial information about the companies. Information Resource Group (www.irgweb.com) in Sterling Heights, Mich., fielded IT executive "qualifying" interviews with candidate companies by mail, telephone, and fax in May and June, and helped with data analysis. CIC Research Inc. (www.cicresearch.com) in San Diego fielded the same qualifying survey on the Web and also supplied data analysis. World Research Inc. (www.survey.com) in San Jose, Calif., fielded a second, phone-based survey of 250 InformationWeek 500 executives in July looking at IT management priorities for the upcoming year.

Information Builders Inc. (www.ibi.com) of New York, leveraging its WebFocus product, has created a Web-based application on www.informationweek.com/500advisor for the purpose of benchmarking IT organizations against the InformationWeek 500.

How can we make the InformationWeek 500 more useful to your organization? Let us know at rweston@cmp.com.

--Rusty Weston, managing editor, InformationWeek Research