2009 - North America MAKE Winners

Key Findings

• Newcomers to this year’s North American MAKE Winner’s circle are: ConocoPhillips and MITRE. Hewlett-Packard, a former North American MAKE Winner, returned to this year’s list of top companies.
• Enterprises failing to repeat as North American MAKE Winners were: Air Products & Chemicals, Procter & Gamble, and US National Aeronautics & Space Administration.
• The economic and competitive advantages of pursuing a business strategy based on knowledge leadership are both tangible and significant. One of the clearest metrics to demonstrate this fact is Total Shareholder Return (TSR). Even during the most severe decline in TSR since the Great Depression – the 10-year average TSR for the 2009 North American MAKE Winners was 12.0%, over five times that of the US Fortune 500 company median.
• Return on Revenues for the 2009 North American MAKE Winners averaged 11.2% – over three times the Global Fortune 500 median. Return on Assets for the 2009 North American MAKE Winners averaged 9.7% – nearly three times the Global Fortune 500 median. The MAKE leaders in both these metrics were Apple, Google and Microsoft.
• According to the MAKE expert panel, the North American knowledge-based economy is driven by the following key business sectors (based on the number of MAKE Finalists in each industry): diversified manufacturing, IT hardware/ software/ solutions,  and oil & gas.
• During the past decade North American firms have allocated considerable resources to improving their innovation and new product management capabilities, and it appears to be yielding benefits in terms of improved competitiveness and profitability. This MAKE knowledge performance dimension had the highest average Winner’s score.
• North America MAKE organizations are facing leadership challenges in developing knowledge workers. A combination of factors – the retirement of growing numbers of ‘baby boomers’ and difficulties in recruiting talented new knowledge workers from the small pool of ‘Generation Y’ individuals – is forcing North American firms to devote significant resources to human intellectual capital management. This MAKE knowledge performance dimension had the lowest average Winner’s score.
• The 8th annual North American MAKE study has revealed that the number of committed knowledge-driven organizations has declined in the face of severe economic disruptions. Those organizations which are continuing to invest in creating and implementing a strategic enterprise knowledge strategy will come out of this economic recession with a significant competitive advantage.