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Innovation at Coca-Cola goes far beyond pretty packaging. Each year The Coca-Cola Company develops and launches new beverages like Coca-Cola Ginger, equipment, distribution models, and programs.

Here are five Coca-Cola innovations from 2016 that are sure to surprise, delight and inspire. We can't wait to see what 2017 will bring!

A new member of the Coca-Cola family arrived in late 2016 and Australians were the first in the world to meet it.

Designed with curious taste buds in mind, the limited-edition flavour came about after research on the beverage preferences of Australians found ginger to be a significant trend.

Have you ever grabbed a Coke so cold it was almost frozen?

For 20 years Coca-Cola engineers have tinkered with fridges meant to produce slushie Coke consistently. They struck gold in 2016, unveiling Arctic Coke coolers.

In 2014 Coca-Cola partnered with Fellow Robots, a Silicon Valley-based startup. The collaboration gave rise to Cobot 1.0, a consumer-facing Coca-Cola robot inspired by the idea of "a Coke finds you instead of you finding a Coke".

Fast-forward to 2016 and Cobot 2.0 made its public debut at a cinema in Shanghai distributing beverages to a surprised crowd of movie-goers.

Hearing-impaired music fans in Pakistan can now feel and experience their country's biggest music platform.

Coke Studio for the Deaf uses a studio-like setup to enable people with a hearing impairment to feel and enjoy Coke Studio from the comfort of a sofa embedded with hundreds of tiny vibration engines and LED lights synched with music.

This summer, college campuses and festivals across the south-eastern United States had the chance to cool down with ice-cold Coca-Cola. And by ice cold we mean literally ice cold, served up in contour Coca-Cola bottle made entirely of ice.

Made up of 15 stops the tour lasted nine weeks, during which about 11,250 Ice Bottles were distributed.

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5 Coca-Cola Innovations From 2016 That Blew Our Minds

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Innovation at Coca-Cola goes far beyond pretty packaging. Each year The Coca-Cola Company develops and launches new beverages like Coca-Cola Ginger, equipment, distribution models, and programs. Here are five Coca-Cola innovations from 2016 that are sure to surprise, delight and inspire. We can't wait to see what 2017 will bring!

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The year 2015 saw 3D printing continue its march into every dimension of our lives. With new materials, new methods, and new applications, the young field is revolutionizing prototyping and manufacturing, and changing the worlds of design, medicine, construction, and, of course, hobbying.

What were the key developments of the year that brought us closer to 3D utopia? Brian Federal gave us his favorites. Federal is a filmmaker out of North Carolina, and a "3D printing evangelist" as he describes himself. He's currently producing a feature length documentary called " 3D Printing Revolution." Here's what wowed him in 2015.

1) The Printing Welder
The size of most 3D printed objects is constrained by the size of the 3D printer they're printed in. A group of Dutch manufacturers stumbled on this little fact when they were looking for a way to 3D print furniture. So they invented their own method. "The innovation is a robotic arm with a print head that extrudes metal strong enough to support structure," says Federal. Working with Autodesk and the Heijmans construction company, they've managed to print a model of a bridge that will eventually span a canal in Amsterdam. "This is a small step into the much broader field of Construction Automation."

2) Speed Printing
The vast majority of 3D printing technologies use a layer-by-layer strategy (hence the word "additive.") For the user, the method has some serious disadvantages. Chief among the complaints is the eons it takes to complete a job. But the building-up tactic also limits potential materials, increases that chance of introducing flaws, and reduces an object's ultimate strength. Carbon3D's CEO Joseph DeSimone wants to change all that. Inspired by a morphing bad guy who rises from a molten puddle in "Terminator 2," their "Continuous Liquid Interface Production" approach creates monolithic forms out a pool of polymer. And it happens to be 25 to 100 times faster than other printers on the market, with the potential, according to DeSimone, to be 1000 times faster. "Securing a tap from The Ford Motor Company, and $100,000,000 in Google Ventures cash, these guys are set to deliver a broad spectrum of innovation," says Federal. "This is a company to watch."

3) Powerful Personal Applications
The world of biomedicine is where 3D printing technology has the greatest potential to significantly alter people's lives for the better. It's arguably where tailored one-off items are most in need. 3D printed implants and prosthetics have helped many, but what could be more miraculous than letting the paralyzed walk. Scott Summitt's 3D Systems partnered with Ekso Bionics to do just that. "The Ekso Bionics suit fits to a person's body perfectly and will enable a spinal injury patient without the use of their legs the ability to walk again," says Federal. 3D Systems gave Amanda Boxtel, who had been in a wheelchair for years, a full body scan. They were able to then make form-fitting parts (for spine, shin, and thighs in her case) that integrated seamlessly with the moving parts of an exoskeleton. As a result, Boxtel was able to walk again. Now Ekso Bionic is producing the system for anyone that needs robotic assistance.

4) Prints in Space
A rocket engine is no game-piece to be sold on Etsy. But that doesn't mean you can't 3D print one-or most of one. In fact, doing so gives you the option to test and retest more quickly and cheaply than any other manufacturing technique. Test and retest is just what Elon Musk and his engineers at SpaceX have been doing for years with their 3D printed SuperDraco rocket engine. This year the rocket finally got off the ground. "The innovation of a new, primarily 3D printed, reusable rocket is exponentially delivering new opportunities in space travel, mining, and colonization," says Federal.

5) On the Cheap
Whatever miracles 3D printing may be bringing to space travel, to the injured, and to manufacturers, as a household phrase "3D Printer" has just one meaning: a tool that allows anyone to produce as much goofy plastic stuff as they can dream up. Many companies have aimed their products at this everyman market, but XYZ seems to stand out. "The innovation here is the price point and massive sales distribution," says Federal. The company's CEO, Simon Shen has said that, with the Chinese government, he plans to deliver 3D printers to every school in China. "Wish I was hearing that kind of commitment here in the good old USA," says Federal.

6) Phone Printer
Of course, no technology has been truly democratized until it can be done with a cell phone. Now Jeng-Ywan Jeng, a professor of mechanical engineering and the dean of the engineering department at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, has invented a printer that uses light from a cell phone to polymerize liquid resin. "This product is not on the market yet but I have seen test prints that had remarkable resolution," says Federal. "This innovation could be a major disruptor with the addition of tablet and TV versions that will bring cost to print down dramatically." Jeng's dream is to have the phone make the scan and then use its light in the tiny printer to print the end product. And maybe someday we'll be printing as much as we're currently texting.

Michael Abrams is an independent writer.

Learn more about the latest technologies in 3D printing at ASME's AM3D Conference & Expo.

The innovation of a new, primarily 3D printed, reusable rocket is exponentially delivering new opportunities in space travel, mining, and colonization.

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The year 2015 saw 3D printing continue its march into every dimension of our lives. With new materials, new methods, and new applications, the young field is revolutionizing prototyping and manufacturing, and changing the worlds of design, medicine, construction, and, of course, hobbying.

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On Monday, June 5, Apple handed out its annual Apple Design Awards, which celebrate the talent, artistry and creativity of developers who set the standard for ideal app design. Now in its 20th year, the Awards recognize excellence in design, innovation and technology in apps and games across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. This year's honorees represent eight countries around the world: Austria, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Singapore, Slovenia and the US.

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Apple Design Awards celebrate innovation and creativity

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On Monday, June 5, Apple handed out its annual Apple Design Awards, which celebrate the talent, artistry and creativity of developers who set the standard for ideal app design. Now in its 20th year, the Awards recognize excellence in design, innovation and technology in apps and games across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV.

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Marriott: Most Innovative Company | Fast Company

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Read more about Marriott on Fast Company

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Tesla. The company name evokes very different yet equally strong responses from critics and fans. Critics argue Tesla loses money on each car sold. Indeed, with losses of $290 million in 2014 and $888 million in 2015, it's unclear when the company will eventually hit profitability. Critics also point to the fact that cofounder and visionary CEO Elon Musk often oversells what the company can do in the short run. The company has missed stated goals and new vehicle launch deadlines. Moreover, the company has sometimes struggled with its innovations, like getting the Model X doors to work just right. On the other hand, proponents ignore the short term losses and point out that Tesla produces highly desirable electric vehicles-cars that go faster, go further (than other electric vehicles) and are safer than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. They point out the astonishing fact that Tesla reeled in nearly 400,000 reservations for its Model 3 in a single week - pre-orders that will rack up over $16 billion of vehicle sales. A single tweet from Musk teasing a product announcement sent Tesla shares surging yesterday. Investors continue to back Tesla with a lofty market cap of over $30 billion, which translates into a significant innovation premium.

It's this innovation premium that helped Tesla race to the top of our Forbes Most Innovative companies list in 2015 - and stay there. It maintains its #1 position for the 2016 ranking. Tesla's next challenge is whether or not it can become profitable and deliver on its huge market value. And will Tesla ultimately be the catalyst behind transforming the auto industry from ICE vehicles to electric vehicles? Our analysis signals it can and likely will.
Taking Tesla's Lofty Market Cap Into The Future
Tesla deserves its high market cap only if it can reach profitability - preferably in the next four years. Musk has long stated that the path to success was to start at the high end of the market with cars like the Model S and X and then move down market, producing more affordable cars like the Model 3. But if Tesla can't make money on expensive vehicles as some analysts suggest, the obvious question is: can they make money selling cars at half the price?

The answer? Absolutely. Our analysis (with professor David Kryscynski of Brigham Young University) of Tesla's improvement in cost per vehicle shows Tesla is making money on the Model S and will likely make solid profits on the Model 3. Let us explain. One of the tools of any strategist is a scale (or experience) curve. A scale curve calculates how rapidly the cost per unit (in this case, vehicle) decreases with every doubling of unit volume.[1] This analysis is useful for projecting how Tesla's costs per unit will change going forward based upon its history.

A scale curve analysis on quarterly cost and production data from 2012-2014[2] shows Tesla's cost of production per Model S at the end of 2014 was around $50,000 per vehicle (See Figure 1). This is actually quite good for a Model S with an average selling price of about $85,000. It means Tesla's losses are a result of significant investments in sales and R&D to launch Models S, X and 3, and to build the battery Gigafactory. It also shows Tesla's cost per unit has been dropping roughly 20% with each doubling of unit volume.

This scale curve analysis allows us to project with some confidence what Tesla's future costs per vehicle will be when Tesla ramps up production on the Model 3. If we assume the Model 3 will follow roughly the same scale curve as the Model S (cost per unit drops 20% with every doubling in volume) and that it will cost 10% less to produce (and this is a very conservative assumption), we can provide rough estimates of the unit volumes Tesla will need to hit profitability. First, if Tesla can sell 160,000 units of the model 3 in a year, its cost per unit should be roughly $35,000-the base price for the vehicle (the average selling price is projected to be around $42,500). If Tesla can sell 275,000 units of the Model 3, its cost per unit will drop to roughly $27,500. With an average selling price of $42,500 and cost per unit of $27,500, Tesla would make roughly $15,000 per unit to apply to cover its costs for R&D, sales and marketing, G&A, and the Gigi-factory. Based on those projected costs, we believe Tesla will roughly breakeven at around 275,000 units and start generating company profits above that volume.

The bottom line is that sustaining Tesla's lofty stock price depends on Model 3 volume. Musk was right when arguing that Model S and X were key to launching Model 3-the car that can drive the firm to profitability. If Model 3 generates 400,000 orders per year (the number of current reservations), the lofty stock price makes sense. If not, that's obviously a very different ending to the story.

Tesla's Innovative Leadership: Pushing For The Impossible
Financials aside, two of Tesla's greatest assets driving its high innovation premium are something that can't be so neatly calculated: innovation and leadership. To attain its goal of industry transformation, Tesla must first do something it's never done before: produce cars in seriously large quantities.

Skeptics say Tesla overpromises, rarely hitting ambitious timelines. In fact, in the past five years Tesla has fallen short on more than 20 projections, ranging from car-production output to financial targets.[1] On Tesla's last earnings call in May, Musk announced a dramatically revised production schedule for Model 3. Instead of pushing it back, Tesla moved it forward - by two years. Like many of Tesla's analysts, we think its production goal of 500,000 vehicles in 2018 is very aggressive and probably impossible. Shipping such a massive quantity of cars means revving up production of Tesla's existing models, bringing online the world's largest electric battery factory, and cranking out hundreds of thousands of Model 3 sedans - an entirely new vehicle. Musk has laid out a timeline for Model 3 suppliers to ensure that they have parts ready for production by July 1, 2017. But he conceded, even while giving that date, that it "is not a date that will actually be met; it is an impossible date," but it is a date the company needs "to hold suppliers to."[2]

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Tesla's Innovations Are Transforming The Auto Industry

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Tesla. The company name evokes very different yet equally strong responses from critics and fans. Critics argue Tesla loses money on each car sold. Indeed, with losses of $290 million in 2014 and $888 million in 2015, it's unclear when the company will eventually hit profitability.

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Is Starbucks a hot beverage company that is great at technology, or is it a tech company that happens to serve hot beverages?

With the appointment last month of its first Chief Technology Officer, this is perhaps not so straightforward to answer. As far back as 2010, Howard Schultz chairman and CEO gave an interview to Marketing Magazine outlining the company's plans to become a leader in the digital space, stating that "social media is a natural extension of our brand because we want to do things that are unexpected and to speak to all sorts of people who are engaged in social media".

Mobile payments now account for 21% of net transactions in U.S. company-operated stores, and this technology was only available in 7,500 of their 11,500 plus stores. They must be doing something right, when you compare it to US Department of Commerce figures of 7.2% eCommerce sales as percent of retail.

A focus on technological based innovation to drive loyalty and engagement and ensure on-going customer relevance (with the added benefit of super-sizing operational efficiency) has always been part of Starbucks' strategy of promoting its stores as "the third place" - the other two being home and work. The place where you can hang out without being moved on, complete with comfortable chairs, music, free Wi-Fi and power outlets for laptops.

Pair this with their strategy of being wherever you are. They have a global network of 23,043 owned and franchised coffee stores across 68 countries, with an almost inescapable concentration in high wealth and traffic neighbourhoods in cities around the world. Seoul is the most Starbucks-filled city in the world with 284 locations, followed by New York at 277, then Shanghai at 266 and London at 202.

Despite fluctuating coffee prices and strong competition the company managed to post record fiscal results last week, with impressive revenues ($19.2 billion up 17% FY14), high margins (GAAP 18.8%) and increased customer traffic (3%). The financial markets agree; stocks have risen more than 60% since January 2014.

But what have they been doing that has led to this extraordinary growth?
New digital based ordering and delivery systems
Following a successful phased launch in the US of Mobile Order & Pay, Starbucks made it available from last month nationwide and started its international rollout in London, UK and Toronto, Canada. Mobile Order & Pay allows Starbucks customers to order in advance via an app and pick up their order from their chosen location, thus eliminating queues and making coffee-to-go even more convenient.

Payments are made through the Starbucks loyalty card, which creates operational efficiency as it reduces credit card costs and rewards the customer. The technology frees up more employees towards production and enables faster execution of orders.

Last month, a new pilot project designed for a dense urban environment was launched in the Empire State Building in New York; Green Apron Delivery service. The 12,000 people working there can order food and beverages from a select menu via a dedicated website. The orders are then prepped in a designated kitchen in the building and delivered to an agreed drop off location. Another project with courier delivery service, Postmates, was announced earlier this year.
New retail concepts - seeking unique ways and places to connect with customers
Starbucks has launched a wide range of novel concepts over the last few years, from its store on a Swiss train, to a mobile shop serving university campuses in the US, to the Express format store opposite the New York Stock Exchange.

Most recent is the Reserve Roastery and Tasting room in Seattle, aimed at enriching the experience of coffee lovers by providing them a 15,000 square foot space as a site for small batch roasting of premium coffee lines. Specialist Starbucks Reserve only Stores have been popping up all over the world from Taiwan to London to Mexico City, and feature the more expensive Reserve coffees. Each of these stores has been designed to act as a theatre in order to showcase an experiential coffee experience.

New partnerships that enhance the customer experience
These include collaborations with Spotify and Apple Music, an attempt to create a next generation music ecosystem. Wireless charging in stores is also being trialled in the US, thanks to a partnership with Duracell Powermat - sure to become a big draw for many customers.
New loyalty programs to reward customers based on their cultural preferences
Touted as the model loyalty program, Starbucks' loyalty program spans 28 countries and is customised for each. For instance, in China it relies on gamification to drive participation, whilst the UK program has the highest threshold to top-tier benefits but many more "soft benefits," such as free add-ons like shots and flavours. Meanwhile, the US is the only market where Starbucks uses email targeting for promotions and offers.
New innovation methods
'MyRewardsIdea' was created as a crowdsourcing community website in 2008 to collect ideas, suggestions and feedback from customers. Other users comment and vote on the ideas, and Starbucks informs them once they have launched. Starbucks also pilots its most innovative ideas across three stores in Seattle which Schultz describes as the company's "laboratory." The notion of selling alcohol was first tested here.

Starbucks' ability to gain and keep customer attention through innovative reward programs and game changing concepts has been key to driving its growth - what lessons can we learn to accelerate our own growth initiatives?

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Is Starbucks a hot beverage company that is great at technology, or is it a tech company that happens to serve hot beverages? With the appointment last month of its first Chief Technology Officer, this is perhaps not so straightforward to answer.

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Spotify: Most Innovative Company | Fast Company

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Hindustan Unilever on the Forbes World's Most Innovative Companies List

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Hindustan Unilever #7 on the Forbes World's Most Innovative Companies List

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Picture your ideal neighborhood. What does it look like? Is it manicured, with buildings set in a pattern so that everything flows together, designed for perfection? Or is it gritty and spontaneous, the kind of place where a restaurant might move into the space that used to house a dry cleaner? Boxes bearing the Amazon logo can arrive at doorsteps in either of these environments, of course, but Amazon's founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, prefers the second type.

"I think neighborhoods, cities, and towns that have evolved are more interesting and delightful than ones that have been carefully top-down planned," he tells me when I meet him at Amazon's Seattle headquarters in November. "There's just something very human" about them, he says.

"Our customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service," CEO Bezos says. "And I love that. it's super-motivating for us."

It's a surprising answer from a man known for his disciplined adherence to Six Sigma-style processes and data-driven decision making. But it's also revealing. Over its nearly 22 years, Amazon has moved into one sector after another and gentrified it, even if that meant tearing down its own existing structures. Amazon's Echo smart speaker rose on the lot where its Fire Phone flamed out. The latest version of Amazon's streaming music service, Amazon Music Unlimited, was constructed on top of its initial music store, Amazon MP3, which opened nine years ago. Amazon Studios' Emmy Award-winning original TV shows are built upon a crowdsourcing platform that the company first introduced in 2010 for aspiring scriptwriters. Even the company's fashion business-Amazon is now the second-largest seller of apparel in the U.S., according to Morgan Stanley-evolved from brand experiments in outdoor furniture (2004), home goods (2008), electronic accessories (2009), diapers (2014), and now perishables such as organic, fair-trade-certified coffee.

Unlike Apple, Google, and Microsoft, Amazon is not fixated on a tightly designed ecosystem of interlocking apps and services. Bezos instead emphasizes platforms that each serves its own customers in the best and fastest possible way. "Our customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service," he says. "And I love that. It's super-motivating for us." That impulse has spawned an awesome stream of creative firsts. Just this past year, Prime Video became available in more than 200 countries and territories, following the November debut of The Grand Tour, Amazon's most-watched premiere ever. Twitch, the streaming video-game network that Amazon acquired in 2014, unveiled its first three original titles from its recently formed studios. Amazon invested millions in startups that will build voice-control apps for the intelligent assistant Alexa and give her thousands of new skills. The company opened two dozen new fulfillment centers, became the largest online store in India, and made its first delivery by autonomous drone in the United Kingdom.

Bezos's strategy of continuous evolution has allowed the company to experiment in adjacent areas-and then build them into franchises. The website that once sold only books now lets anyone set up a storefront and sell just about anything. The warehouse and logistics capabilities that Amazon built to sort, pack, and ship those books are available, for a price, to any seller. Amazon Web Services, which grew out of the company's own e-commerce infrastructure needs, has become a $13 billion business that not only powers the likes of Airbnb and Netflix, but stores your Kindle e-book library and makes it possible for Alexa to tell you whether or not you'll need an umbrella today.

Video: How Ford Is Integrating Amazon's Alexa Into All Of Its Cars

Amazon is a singular enterprise, one that rises to the top of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies list because it has continued to be nimble even as it has achieved enviable scale. To truly understand how Bezos is meshing size and agility in 2017, though, you need to look beyond sales figures ($100 billion in 2015) and the stock price (up more than 300% in the past five years) and consider three initiatives that drive Amazon today: Prime, the company's rapidly proliferating $99-per-year membership program; an incursion into the physical world with brick-and-mortar stores, something the company has long resisted; and a restless rethinking of logistics, epitomized by a new fulfillment center an hour outside Seattle that features high-tech robots working alongside human workers like a factory of the future.

Our mobile-first, on-demand world finds its roots in Amazon's founding idea: that digital commerce will radically reshape our marketplace. The company's impact has already been staggering. In January, the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance conducted a survey of nearly 3,000 independent businesses, half of them retailers, asking them to cite the biggest threats they faced. Competition from chains and big-box stores, health care, finding employees, and rising rents all ranked near the bottom as modest concerns. "Way above everything was competition from Amazon," says ILSR codirector Stacy Mitchell. (The study also found that Amazon's expansion in 2015 led to a net loss across all businesses of 149,000 jobs.)

Despite all the twists and surprises in recent decades-all the newcomers with youth, funding, and can-do enthusiasm-Amazon remains the undisputed leader, a startup at heart still striving to remake our expectations. And to repeatedly remake itself.

Nearly all of Amazon's most recent innovations share a connection to Prime, which by some estimates accounts for 60% of the total dollar value of all merchandise sold on the site. Between 40 million and 50 million people in the United States use Prime, and, according to Morgan Stanley, those customers spend around $2,500 on Amazon annually, more than four times what nonmembers spend. (Amazon refuses to offer any hard numbers related to Prime membership-that would be competitor focused rather than customer obsessed, as the executives there say-but it will confirm that Prime members spend more and shop across a greater number of categories than other users.)

"The way this company [is], it wouldn't surprise me if we continue to keep accelerating," says Greg Greeley, Amazon's head of Prime.

If you somehow manage to take advantage of every Prime membership feature, it's undeniably a good bargain. Along with free two-day shipping for millions of products, and tens of thousands of items available at your door in an hour or less through Prime Now, there is one-hour restaurant delivery, a free e-book a month (including the entire Harry Potter series), and ad-free viewing of a streaming video-game channel on Twitch-all included in the annual fee. You can get early access to Amazon's best deals, 20% off diapers, and unlimited photo storage. For a few more dollars, Prime can be upgraded to include unlimited audiobooks, grocery delivery, and a subscription to HBO that can be watched on Amazon's Fire TV streaming media player. More than 50 "benefits" were added for members around the globe in the second half of 2016 alone, says Greg Greeley, Amazon's global VP in charge of Prime. "I would like to say that the team thinks, 'Oh, boy, we'll take a deep breath here,' " he says. "But the way this company [is], it wouldn't surprise me if we continue to keep accelerating."

What Amazon Prime is selling most of all is time. Every executive I spoke to, when asked about how it all fits together, cites this desire to get you whatever you want in the shortest window possible. Stephenie Landry, the Amazon vice president who launched Prime Now in 2014 and has overseen its expansion into 49 cities in seven countries, explains that her business merely has to answer two questions: "Do you have what I want, and can you get it to me when I need it?" The rest of the customer experience is built around answering both questions in the affirmative.

The more products and services Amazon is able to cram into Prime, the more likely users are to renew their membership and buy more stuff, which gives Amazon more data about their tastes and what they are likely to buy next. That information is used to spin out new products and services, such as the Dash button, which replenishes popular items with a tap, and Alexa, which is built, in part, for shopping. "You can just say, 'Alexa, reorder toothpaste,' " says Bezos. "And it knows which kind of toothpaste." That's why he has repeatedly called Prime the company's "flywheel": a device used in engines that provides constant energy. It is both an accelerant to Amazon's forward motion and a beneficiary.

A sizzle video for Amazon Go, an automated convenience store being tested in Seattle.

Bezos says that people have been asking him for 20 years whether he would ever open physical stores. The answer, consistently, has been no. "I've answered pretty much the same way the whole time, which is that we will if we have a differentiated idea," Bezos tells me. Yet today, suddenly, Amazon has four concepts in the works.

Why the shift? In part it links back to Prime; retail stores offer a tangible lure for the uninitiated. But, as Bezos explains, Amazon's technological sophistication also now makes it possible for in-store shoppers to interact with its digital platforms in all-new manners. Monitoring the interplay is a classic Amazon way to spot new opportunities.

The first wave of Amazon stores is somewhat traditional: More than 30 pop-up shops showcasing Amazon's electronic gadgets-Kindle, Echo, Fire TV, Fire tablets, and Dash buttons-dotted the country by late last year. The next phase: expanding the highly curated Amazon Books stores -which showcase titles with a higher-than-four-stars customer rating alongside excerpts of reviews from the website-from three locations to eight. But it is the third leg of the company's retail experiment that begins to rattle expectations. Amazon Go is a convenience-store concept the company announced in December (it will launch publicly in Seattle in early 2017). After a shopper swipes a code on her mobile phone at the entryway turnstile, she can grab whatever items she likes; they are magically added to her digital cart and automatically paid for when she leaves, through her existing account. This ability to skip both the line and any cash register on the way out is made possible by Amazon's cloud computing, machine learning, voice control, and logistics know-how. It's also another example of Amazon creating a technology platform that could be sold to other businesses.

Finally, and more quietly, another grocery-store concept is also being prepped. Although no one inside Amazon is willing to talk about it, documents filed with local buildings departments in Seattle and the San Francisco suburbs of Sunnyvale and San Carlos show that the company is erecting stores in all three locales. (Construction at the Seattle location-where a Chinese restaurant once stood, on a busy commercial thoroughfare in the fast-growing Ballard neighborhood-appears to be nearly complete.) The documents describe a system that would seem to extend the AmazonFresh grocery service: Customers load their digital carts remotely and pay online, then schedule a physical pickup within a two-hour window. "When picking up purchased items, customers either can drive into a designated parking area with eight parking stalls where the purchased items will be delivered to their cars, or they can walk into the retail area to pick up their items," the filings say.

These stores are not likely to change the way most Americans get their cornflakes overnight. Still, Amazon has always been good at being patient-and incrementally improving its offerings. Since AmazonFresh launched in 2007, the service has slowly expanded to dozens of cities. The Amazon neighborhood continues to change.

Planted on the edge of a military base, Amazon's recently opened fulfillment center, in DuPont, Washington, looks from the outside like a generic warehouse, with a line of idling trucks snaking around the building waiting to load and unload product. But what's inside represents a huge advance in the way Amazon sorts, packs, and ships orders.

It starts with a "vision tunnel," a conveyor belt tented by a dome full of cameras and scanners. As each box comes off the truck, it is photographed and scanned on all sides. Image-recognition algorithms then sort each parcel based on variables such as the type of product or size and weight. What takes humans with bar-code scanners an hour to accomplish at older fulfillment centers can now be done in half that time.

Boxes are towed from the docks into the million-square-foot warehouse, sometimes by driverless vehicles. This facility handles the largest items that Amazon ships, which is why there's also a huge, 6-ton yellow robot on the main floor. It has a six-axis arm that could pick up a car with ease, but today it's mostly lifting pallets loaded 4 feet high with diapers and Keurig cups to the second floor of the warehouse where they will await shipping. The arm performs a constant, mostly silent waltz with an ensemble of rolling Amazon robots, which represent the next-generation offspring of the company's $775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems in 2012, and were only fully integrated into the fulfillment center workflow last year.

Amazon One, a Boeing 767, is part of a fleet of 40 cargo planes Amazon plans to roll out over the next two years.[Photo: courtesy of Amazon]

Once a package leaves the warehouse, it may end up on a Boeing 767 with the Prime Air logo emblazoned on its side. Bezos rolled out the first in a fleet of 40 wide-bodies last summer, which will be operated in partnership with two aircraft-leasing companies. In January, Amazon announced that the fleet would be supported by a new air hub in Kentucky that will employ 2,000 workers-a $1.49 billion investment, according to a spokeswoman with the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. The planes, like the thousands of cargo trailers that already sport the Prime logo, make Amazon less dependent on its partnerships with FedEx, DHL, and the United States Postal Service. And, pending FAA approval, those fully operational Amazon delivery drones might one day cut delivery time down to 30 minutes or less.

Amazon stresses that its new automated fulfillment centers actually require more human workers than the old ones did, because the warehouse can store a significantly larger number of products-which all still need people for boxing and general oversight (plus, someone's got to service those robots when they need repairs). The plant in DuPont, active almost 24/7, employs more than a thousand people full time. At stow station 1405, for instance, I watch a young guy with tattoos, a man bun, and large-gauge flesh-tunnel earrings grab item after item from orange robots, scan each one, and, after the computer gives the green light, send it to be boxed. Over the holiday season, Amazon hired an extra 120,000 workers at centers nationwide to help meet demand. This is what the future of American factory work might look like.

"I have the best job in the world because I get to work in the future," says Bezos.[Photo: Peter Hapak]

Amazon's business is not without its challenges. The company's imperative to deliver more stuff faster has racheted up its annual shipping costs north of $11 billion, reinforcing the pressure to wring efficiencies out of the company's processes and its people. In the run-up to last year's holiday shopping season, pilots who work for Amazon's Prime Air shipping contractors went on strike, demanding hiring increases to reduce their workload. It's no wonder that the blistering 2015 New York Times article about bruising work environments at Amazon remains in the popular consciousness.

Amazon is working to counteract this legacy. The company pledged in January to create more than 100,000 full-time positions over the next 18 months, and it's building a new headquarters complex in the heart of downtown Seattle. Five buildings and a 2,000-seat auditorium will surround a trio of glass-enclosed spheres that, when completed in 2018, will contain more than 3,000 species of plants and trees from around the world. There will be flexible, couch-filled work spaces and an "Expressions Lab," where employees can learn to knit or attend a "Bob Ross Paint Night." One floor will include a small outdoor dog park, and there will be several markets and cafeterias. Amazon is also funding an additional streetcar for the city, as well as bicycle paths leading to the three-block complex, which includes 1.7 acres of public space. "The biggest thing is probably just that we're not in a suburban campus," says Bezos, "which I think would change the vibrancy and energy of Amazon."

In November, Amazon released a video ad portraying a pair of aging friends-a priest and an imam-laughing, hugging, and then ordering the same knee braces for each other. It is a sensitive and moving vignette, portraying Amazon as a connector of cultures, the kind of compassionate business it has not always been given credit for being. The ad arrived just two weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, so I ask Bezos what the company's role might be in bridging the divides that exist in the U.S. After all, he bankrolls the Washington Post, which went after Trump aggressively during the presidential campaign (and was an early and influential opponent of Trump's immigration ban). His answer is almost laughably narrow. "Well, I'll tell you one way that I don't think anybody is divided," Bezos replies. "Everybody wants fast delivery. Low prices. I'm serious about this. Our job is to provide a great customer experience, and that is something that is universally desired all over the world."

It's tough to argue with his words. And yet this Bezosian boilerplate is certainly less than the full story. Because Amazon is doing more than delivering our next tube of toothpaste. By using the "divine discontent of the customer as a North Star," as Bezos puts it, the company is energizing a culture of relentless progress. The neighborhood may be changing, but maybe that's good. Maybe that's what business in the modern era is all about.

This article is part of our coverage of the World's Most Innovative Companies of 2017.

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Why Amazon Is The World's Most Innovative Company Of 2017

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Picture your ideal neighborhood. What does it look like? Is it manicured, with buildings set in a pattern so that everything flows together, designed for perfection? Or is it gritty and spontaneous, the kind of place where a restaurant might move into the space that used to house a dry cleaner?

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Netflix: Most Innovative Company | Fast Company

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When the iPhone first debuted back in 2007, it was both an innovative and disruptive product. Here was a smartphone that had no physical keyboard, but instead was built from the ground up to be driven by a finger. It featured a design that would be copied, ripped off, and emulated by all the players in the smartphone market.

See also: iPhone 5se: Sense, or nonsense?

But the iPhone is also a classic example of how a market leader can afford to take its time when it comes to releasing new features. The history of the iPhone is one of gradual improvements punctuated by short bursts of innovation and reinvention.

Whether you're a fan of Apple or not, it's impossible to deny the fact that Apple's innovations have dramatically shaped the smartphone industry, giving us touchscreen devices, multitouch displays, FaceTime, Siri, app stores, apps, retina displays, an expectation of regular updates, and fingerprint scanners that transformed the way we secure our devices.

We've also seen some reinvention, specifically relating to the user interface, software, and display size. The march of progress has at times been glacially slow (remember how long it took for Apple to bring cut/copy/paste to the iPhone?), but it has been sustained.

But it's also impossible to deny that Apple has also peddled a lot of lame gimmicks over the years. It's taken its obsession with making products thinner and lighter to crazy extremes (to the detriment of other, more useful features such as increased battery life and durability). Plus different colors (specifically the iPhone 5c), and features such as 3D Touch and Live Photos are little more than consumer eye candy.

Apple has also played the yearly "performance improvements" card, flaunting the benefits of Moore's law about like it's something new. But "faster" is an old card, and one that stopped working for the PC industry well over a decade ago, and one that's of little interest to smartphone buyers.

While the iPhone was going through a period of robust growth, Apple could afford to keep the pace of innovation steady. It didn't need to come out with an "ultimate" iPhone; all it needed to do was stay one step ahead of the competition. And that's something that Apple has been very successful in doing (partly that's been down to the fact that the competition have been more interested in copying Apple than innovating - just take a look at what Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S7 will offer if you don't believe me).

But now Apple is facing a challenge that it's not previously faced with the iPhone, and that is that sales have plateaued. While this is by no means a problem that's unique to Apple, the Cupertino giant is in a unique - and particularly vulnerable - position because two-thirds of the company's revenue is generated by the iPhone.

Bottom line, this means that Apple needs to work at making the iPhone more compelling, and that means more innovation and more reinvention, because it is this that gets people queuing up to be the first to buy a new iPhone. Apple thrust smartphones into the mainstream by making people realize that they could be useful in a myriad of different and divergent ways. It achieved something with a portable gadget that hadn't happened since the wristwatch - it made the smartphone indispensable.

Ten years ago did you think that you could unlock your front door, turn on the lights, control your thermostat, order pizza, keep an eye on how many steps you take, plan your route to somewhere you've never been, and have a video conversation with a friend or loved one all using a handheld device? Apple's job now is to lay the groundwork for amazing things you'll be doing in ten years that you now can't even dream of.

Think there's not much left that Apple could do? Think again! Here are just a few ideas off the top of my head:

Waterproof iPhone

More durable iPhone

VR integration

New battery technology

Built-in health sensors

Gesture control

There's plenty Apple can be getting on with. The point is that it's not the ideas themselves, but the new markets and opportunities that they open up, especially when they are put into the hands of app developers.

Notice how I didn't call things such as wireless charging or removal of the headphone jack innovative. They're not. Instead, they're examples of incremental betterment based on technological change. And let's be honest, few people are going to rush out and buy a new iPhone because it doesn't have a 3.5mm headphone jack.

I think that a cooling down of iPhone sales will ultimately be a good thing, both for Apple and consumers of technology because it will lead to more innovation and better products and services.

See also:

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iPhone 7: It's time for innovation and reinvention, not gimmicks | ZDNet

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Apple is capable of innovation, but the huge success that the iPhone has enjoyed has meant that it could afford to drip-feed that advancement over time. Now that sales appeared to be slowing down, it's time for some real innovation again.

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Uber: Most Innovative Company | Fast Company

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Red Hat Open Innovation Labs is a consulting engagement for teams

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Request a discovery session and create a solid foundation for your DevOps strategy-built on agile workflows and open source infrastructure.