Essilor, the world leader in ophthalmic optics, was recently named amongst the World’s 30 Most Innovative Companies for the third year running by US magazine Forbes. Once again recognizing the group’s process of continuous innovation in the production of eyeglass lenses, this year the American magazine ranked Essilor:

• 23th worldwide, ahead of companies such as Pepsi (58th) and Unilever (61st)

• 5th in Europe

• 13th in North America

This highlights Essilor’s long-standing reputation as a company focused on innovation. Essilor currently invests around €150 million per year in research and innovation. With its three Innovation and Technology Centres and some 500 researchers throughout the world who are all dedicated to developing solutions for the 4.2 billion people who need vision correction, innovation is at the very core of its strategy and has shaped its corporate culture for more than 165 years.

As one of the pillar of the Group’s growth, innovation has generated major scientific, technological and logistic breakthroughs in Essilor’s products and services, aiming at providing high-quality visual solutions to as many people as possible, in terms of correction, protection and prevention. Products launched over the last 3 years account for approximately 40% of Essilor’s annual sales.

Among some of the Group’s most recent major innovations are:

• Crizal® Prevencia™, the first lens protecting the eye against the harmful effects of blue light and minimising the risks of AMD (age-related macular degeneration);
• Crizal® UV, the first corrective lens which provides the eye with effective protection against reflected and transmitted UV light;
• Varilux® S Series, which reinvents the progressive lens, giving people with presbyopia vision without limits;
• Optifog®, the first high-performance anti-fog lens.

In its approach to innovation the Group draws on an extensive network of international partnerships with universities, industrial companies and specialists in cutting-edge technologies, such as the Institut de la Vision and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, the Nikon-Essilor International Joint Research Center, a joint venture researching into breakthrough technologies, The NESRC-Essilor Industrial Research Chair in Visual Perception and Presbyopia at the School of Optometry – University of Montreal and the NSERC Multisectorial Industrial Research Chair in Coatings and Surface Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal in Canada.

The full ranking is available at http://www.forbes.com/innovative-companies/list/