“It’s wonderful for Xero’s current innovation and growth to be acknowledged,”  says Rod Drury, CEO, Xero, “but the really awesome story is what comes next, as we help millions of small businesses thrive while creating shareholder value.”

“It’s awesome to be recognised. More importantly, it’s yet another acknowledgement that we are building a truly innovative, competitive, global company with a strategy that will disrupt the incumbents and create enormous value.”

Forbes’ method of evaluating companies, dubbed its ‘Innovation Premium’ method, has raised some eyebrows among commentators. Although ostensibly an innovation award, Forbes itself describes the ranking as “a measure of how much investors have bid up the stock price of a company above the value of its existing business based on expectations of future innovative results”.

The full list can be viewed here.