How We Choose a List of Companies

A year ago, the ninth annual Disruptor 50 list came into being under very different circumstances. A year ago, companies went public at record speed and used a variety of tools to hit the public markets. We expected quick exits from companies on last year’s list, and many of them did. The party was lively.

After a year, the music stopped. Most newly public companies do not have chairs, and many have fallen. Meanwhile, those who remain private are, metaphorically, floating in mid-air. Their valuations may still be high, but there is little interest in letting them test the public markets.

Yet young companies, whether public or private, face the same market conditions – soaring costs, rising wages, rising interest rates, supply chain disruptions, consumers strong but nervous, and businesses debating whether to continue investing in growth or start Prepare times for streamlining.company on 2022 Top 50 Disruptors List In the face of these challenges, but they also represent a way forward, an innovative opportunity to emerge from another crisis.

Disruptive innovations are inflation-proof by definition. Classical disruption uses a range of new technologies to solve problems and find better and less expensive solutions. The 2022 Disruptors target broad-based solutions to unravel supply chains, control carbon emissions, democratize access to financial services, and improve the health of vulnerable populations.

We expect that all 50 companies on our tenth annual list will continue to grow and innovate while inspiring change from larger existing competitors as we continue to focus on them for the rest of the year and into the next. Many, perhaps more often than ever, are Disruptor 50 companies.

This year, six disruptors make the list for the fourth time. impossible food The fifth time on the list (it debuted in 2015, when it barely had enough products for a broadcast taste test). stripe is an eight-time Disruptor 50 company, joining Airbnb as the only company in the list’s history to receive this honor, and its $95 billion valuation is the highest in the Disruptor 50’s 10-year history.

But streaks are outliers. Much of the 2022 list is made up of companies earning a spot for the first or second time. It’s a sign of the generational shift of the Disruptor 50, from a group of companies that capitalized on the emerging ubiquity of smartphones and grew out of the depths of the Great Depression, to a market born in an era of social and political turmoil but (mostly) favorable conditions, suddenly facing the possibility of a recession, and likely a longer road to the public markets.

Here’s how we chose this year’s list:

All private, independently owned startups founded after January 1, 2007 are eligible for nomination on the Disruptor 50 list. Nominated companies must submit a detailed analysis, including key quantitative and qualitative information.

Quantitative metrics include data submitted by companies on workforce size and diversity, scalability, and sales and user growth. Some of this information has been retained for scoring purposes only. CNBC also brought in data from a pair of external partners, PitchBook, which provided data on fundraising, implied valuations and investor quality; and ibis worldwe used its database of industry reports to compare these companies based on the industries they are trying to disrupt.

CNBC’s Disruptor 50 Advisory Council — composed of 55 leading thinkers in innovation and entrepreneurship from around the world (see membership list below) — then quantified criteria based on their importance and ability to disrupt existing industries and public companies ranked. This year, the council again found that scalability and user growth were the most important criteria, followed by sales growth and use of breakthrough technologies (including most commonly artificial intelligence and machine learning). These categories are given the highest weight, but the ranking model is designed to ensure that companies must score high on a broad range of criteria to make it to the final list.

Companies are also asked to submit important qualitative information, including a description of their core business model, ideal customers and recent company milestones. A team of more than 30 CNBC editorial staff, including TV anchors, reporters and producers, CNBC.com writers and editors, and many members of the Advisory Board, read the submissions and conducted a comprehensive review of each company. qualitative assessment.

Qualitative scores were combined with weighted quantitative scores to determine which 50 companies made the list and in what order.

Special thanks to the 2022 CNBC Disruptor 50 Advisory Board, who once again provided us with time and insights. As always, we thank them for their contributions:

• Rob Adams, Managing Partner, Congress Avenue Ventures, Research Fellow, IC2 Institute, University of Texas
• Ron Adner, professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business
• Anita Anantharam, Professor, University of Florida
• Suzanne Bergmeister, Executive Director, James Madison University Gilliam Center for Entrepreneurship
• Edward Blair, Chair of Entrepreneurship at the University of Houston
• Robert Brunner, Chief Disruption Officer, University of Illinois Gies School of Business
• Candida Brush, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson College
• Howard W. Buffett, President of Global Impact LLC and Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University
• John Sibley Butler, Professor, University of Texas
• Gary Chan, professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
• Jim Chung, Vice President of Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, George Washington University
• Shawn Clark, Professor/Director, Penn State University
• Benjamin M. Cole, Chair of Entrepreneurship, Fordham University Gabelli School of Business
• Chris Coleridge, Senior Professor of Management Practice at the University of Cambridge
• Jason D’Mello, Associate Professor, Loyola Marymount University
• Donna De Carolis, Dean of the Close School of Entrepreneurship at Drexel University
• Monica Dean, Managing Director, USC Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership
• Judi Eyles, Director of the Papa John Center for Entrepreneurship at Iowa State University
• Clare Gately, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Watford Institute of Technology and EDHEC Business School
• Ari Ginsberg, professor of entrepreneurship and management at NYU Stern School of Business
• Michael Goldberg, Executive Director, Weill School of Entrepreneurship, Case Western Reserve University
• Michael Goldsby, Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship, Ball State University
• Henrich R. Greve, INSEAD Professor of Entrepreneurship
• Anil K. Gupta, Chair and Professor, Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, University of Maryland
• Mike Haynie, Vice President and Professor of Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University
• Lisa Hehenberger, Associate Professor and Director, Center for Social Impact, Esade Business School
• Michael Hendron, Academic Director and Associate Professor, Provo Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship, Brigham Young University
• Keith Hmieleski, Professor of Entrepreneurship, Texas Christian University
• Jim Jindrick, Director of Corporate Engagement, University of Arizona (retired)
• Neil Kane, Assistant Teaching Professor and ESTEEM Program Director, University of Notre Dame
• Sandra Kauanui, Dean, Daveler & Kauanui School of Entrepreneurship, Florida Gulf Coast University
• Donald F. Kuratko, Distinguished Chair and Professor of Entrepreneurship, Indiana University Bloomington Kelley School of Business
• Rob Lalka, Professor of Business and Executive Director, Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Freeman School of Business, Tulane University
• Debra Lam, Executive Director, Georgia Tech Partnership for Inclusive Innovation
• Marie Josee Lamothe, Professor at McGill University
• Vincent Lewis, Vice President, Entrepreneurship Program, University of Dayton
• Alex McKelvie, Associate Dean and Professor of Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management
• Scott Newbert, Academic Director, Entrepreneurship Field Program, Baruch College
• Dan Olszewski, Director of the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Associate Professor of Engineering Practice at Brown University
• Gerhard Plaschka, Professor, DePaul University
• Julia Prats, Professor of Entrepreneurship at IESE Business School
• Jeff Reid, Professor of Practice and Founding Director of the Entrepreneurship Program at Georgetown University
• Lyneir Richardson, Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at Rutgers Business School
• Oklahoma State University Professor and Chair Matthew Rutherford
• Amelia Schaffner, Founding Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business
• Mark Schenkel, professor of entrepreneurship at Belmont University
• Albert Segars, Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• John H. Shannon, Professor, Seton Hall University
• Lewis Sheats, Director of the Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship at Saint Louis University
• Robert Stein, Executive Director, Institute for Excellence in Entrepreneurship at the University of Pittsburgh
• Thales Teixeira, Co-founder and CEO of Decoupling.co and Fmr.Professor at Harvard Business School
• David Touve, Senior Director, Barton Institute, University of Virginia Darden School of Business
• Ari Wallach, CEO, Longpath Labs
• David Zvilichovsky, Senior Academic Faculty at Tel Aviv University and Professor of Global Modularity at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania