I was motivated by the recent publication of the Most Innovative Companies 2013 by Fast Company. The list includes 100 companies, broken out by geography and industry The list is a good read with decent summaries of a interesting companies. Comparing and ranking these companies as Fast Company did is hard to do.

Below are some of the relevant companies I pulled from the Fast Company list. My next post will be my own list of most innovative companies in connected health.

I read a good article this week entitled "Stop Listening to Your Customers." It reinforced lessons learned early on that are applicable today for anyone involved with innovating new technologies for healthcare.

The point of the article is to spend more time observing your target customers rather than simply asking them what they need. You can find other examples of this advice, such as the quote misattributed to Henry Ford that states, "If I had asked them what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Following Rock Health in the battle for Boston healthcare accelerator supremacy — at least in terms of who got there first — Healthbox recently announced its new class of startups for its Boston incubator program. Companies give up 7% of their ownership in return for $50,000 in cash, a supportive group of mentors, access to potential clients and partners, and office space. Here’s the list.

Aavya Health turns lab data into personalized risk scores, with links to education and other resources. Quest and LabCorp seem like good partners for this. I’m totally blanking on the name of another startup (was it in Blueprint or another accelerator?) that was doing something similar based on lab values. Speaking of mobile lab values, I was surprised and impressed to see Quest’s Gazelle mobile app in the App Store Top 20 for health and wellness.

She also uses the Nike+ running app, as I do, and we both like it and prefer it to Runkeeper. I got to thinking over the weekend how I haven’t owned any Nike apparel in a very long time. I don’t wear Nike shoes or clothes when I run. Neither does my wife. What’s interesting about this is we both use the brand name Nike much more frequently than Brooks or Mizuno, the makers of our running shoes. Nike, despite not winning the apparel war, is winning the battle of the minds because it is ahead of the other brands when it comes to the newest form of fitness gear – gadgets and apps. And Nike has been doing this for years. It has had sensors in shoes that sync to iPods and integrations with other tracking products.

The parallels between Nike and segments in health are obvious. I remember reading an interesting blog post a few months ago that I linked to in a news post. I went back and re-read it and realized it missed the point (and I missed the point in my summary of it). That post was about how Nike should partner with pharma to market the Fuelband for health and wellness, and not focus only athletes only.

I was on vacation last week and much more out of touch than planned. I was in northern Door County, WI, a peninsula between Lake Michigan and Green Bay (don’t feel bad if you aren’t familiar with it — I had no clue where it was a year ago). Growing up close to the beach in Florida and having lived in Colorado after that, I wasn’t planning on being terribly impressed with Wisconsin’s summer getaway, but I was, and I find myself wanting to go back. I’ve had my fill of whitefish and cherry-everything for a while, though. I’ve come home feeling refreshed.

Is it just me, or have there been lots of articles and posts the last several weeks debating the hype and reality of mobile health? I think lots of writers and commentators just regurgitate the same material they read, not really adding anything new to the discussion other than maybe a couple of links. This is probably the case with all the mobile health hype stories. I’m not sure who or what to credit with starting the hype discussion.