This is not all. Bangalore-based Wipro is ranked fifth among the top 10 up and coming companies that have the potential to join the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in the world.

BCG has been conducting this survey since 2005. It has surveyed more than 1,500 senior executives in a wide range of countries and industries since 2004 to help cast light on the state of innovation in global business. In its new report, “‘The Most Innovative Companies 2014: Breaking Through Is Hard to Do’”, the firm revealed the 50 companies that international executives ranked as the most innovative.

Apple continues to top the list since 2005. Samsung and Google switched places at number two and three; and Microsoft and IBM round up the top five. For 2014, technology and telecommunications companies continued to lead the pack holding down all of the top five spots in 2014, seven of the top 10, and 21 of the top 50 — the most since 2010.

The biggest change in the 2014 top 50 list is the decline in the number of auto companies. Only nine auto companies are in the top 50 in 2014, and only four ranked in the top 20. This compares with three automakers in the top 10 places in 2013, as well as nine in the top 20, and 14 in the top 50 spots. Automakers also reported both a 26 per cent decline in innovation priority, with 62 per cent assigning it a top-three position, down from 84 per cent last year.

"Innovation isn't getting any easier. Too many companies want to shoot for the moon while their innovation programs are barely airborne," said Neeraj Aggarwal, a BCG Senior Partner & Director. "It is no longer enough to be good at incremental innovation. Breakthrough innovators are especially effective at bringing together the pieces required for radical innovation such as management, governance, and organizational design that can have a major impact on any company's innovation program. Breakthrough innovators corral them all."

The report also said that a majority of strong innovators from the BRIC nations-Brazil, Russia, India and China-curently generate more than 20 per cent of their sales from new products and services created within the past three years.

The 2014 survey found that only 13 percent of respondents have a significant ambition to deliver radical innovation. More than 40 percent of these would-be disruptors indicated that their companies' innovation capabilities are average at best. Executives from companies with strong innovation capabilities-and disruptive ambitions-represent just 7.6 percent of the sample.

"Given digital technology's demonstrated ability to disrupt, one can ask whether those companies that are targeting digital platforms and big data in their innovation programs are opening a lead that those moving more slowly may have a hard time closing," said HadiZablit, a BCG partner and report co-author.