In a year of loss, they’re building market share, upending their industries, and changing consumers’ lives

By Jena McGregor

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“Power lasts 10 years,” goes an old Korean adage. “Influence, not greater quantity than a hundred.”

In a year that brought the excellent to their knees, more of the biggest players in business be in actual possession of seen their power whittled away. The once-venerated Lehman Brothers filed for insolvency in September. American International Group (AIG) now bows to dominion officials after nearly collapsing under a web of risky bets. Even the blue-chip General Electric found itself going hat-in-hand to Warren Buffett.

As the proverb points out, authority has a shelf life, too. And it’s in all probability getting shorter as the cycle of modify accelerates. Companies that once wielded a seemingly unshakeable hold over their industries—General Motors (GM), Sony (SNE), Microsoft (MSFT)—now find themselves following the outstrip of more nimble players of the like kind as Toyota ™, Apple (APPL), and Google (GOOG). “There’s no standing still,” notes veteran strategy guru Gary Hamel. “Influence is like water, always flowing in one place or another.”

The essential part characteristics of influence are unchanged, whether it’s inspiring a faithful following, spawning big ideas, or edifice up gigantic market share. What has changed is how players do it. A company’s physical assets are less important now than the force of its ideas. In the age of blogging and instant communication, consumers are less the recipients of corporate ascendency than powerful actors who help shape it. “We’re coming to realize a brand is not just what the manufacturer says it is,” says Shelly Lazarus, presiding officer and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, “but everything that the consumer or the purchaser experiences.” Think of the common built around Apple products.

With that in mind, BusinessWeek developed a list of the World’s Most Influential Companies. We chose 10 companies that have devised winning strategies in their industries. They are the ones with the game-changing ideas, the greatest impact on consumers, and the bold tactics rivals compete with. None is infallible or without controversy. And our choices were more art than body of knowledge. But we believe each company played a greater role in business over the spent year and could shape the incorporated rural scene for years to come.

In honing the think fit, BusinessWeek worked with an advisory board of 14 academics, consultants, and industry leaders worldwide. Several themes emerged. For one, the developed world is no longer the sole repertory of influential companies. Nearly a third of the board’session suggestions were with respect to companies based in emerging markets, where a vibrating workforce and global capital play a vital role.

And forget about first-mover advantage. Google was not the first search engine, just the simplest and most technologically advanced. Apple, though late to the cell-phone race, has revolutionized the industry with its iPhone. Futurist Andrew Zolli notes that these latecomers don’t “due define, but redefine, the terms of competition.”