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Interactive visualization of 2013 Thomson Reuter's Global Innovators Study

44 points by Charlesmigli 13y ago

Osmium 13y ago
Nice visualisation, but what's the value in this? Symantec's a "global innovator" (really? I'm skeptical, but am I missing something?) And splitting companies into "electronic components" and "computer hardware" seems dubious too, since there's presumably a lot of overlap.
- edelans 13y ago
  You should blame Thomson Reuter's report for that, as I understand it, this page is an attempt to make a boring ranking (http://top100innovators.com/ http://top100innovators.com/ ) into a sexier and more meaningful visualization.
- k2enemy 13y ago
  It isn't even a nice visualization. You have to hover over a ball to find out the company? An old fashioned list that can be grouped by country or industry would communicate the information much faster.
oscilloscope 13y ago
A couple critiques. The "No Breakout" view is almost meaningless. It would be more effective as a ranked list with words. If I take a screenshot of that, it means nothing. Circle positions, sizes, and colors encode no information in this initial view. The only way to get information is to hover, letting you browse the list in a disorganized fashion. It's not clear on load what colors represent. There are no labels whatsoever. The colors make more sense on the "Country Breakout", but you lose the context again if you go to the "Industry Breakout". The last breakout also seems somewhat arbitrary. According to this, Google is part of "Internet Search". Don't they make hardware and software as well? Is IBM still a hardware company? The lines are fuzzy, but this categorical view draws a sharp divide between different sectors. The graphic this is based on, Four Ways to Slice Obama's Budget Proposal, contains much more information and labels it well. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/13/us/politics/2013-budget-proposal-graphic.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/13/us/politics/20... Notice that circle area encodes proposed spending, which is a good measure of size/importance. The coloring is also a quantitative metric with an associated scale. When you go to the "Department Totals" view, you can see how the size/coloring reveals insights about proposed Defense spending (heavy cuts).
- jere 13y ago
  Yea, I was going to post that the initial No Breakout view conveys absolutely no information. The colors haven't yet been explained, the circles are all the same size, and... there are 100 of them (but we already know that). Hovering over dots to find more information is really low bandwith. Another point: the top category on the Industry Breakout view is obscured by the drop down. It wouldn't be such a big deal, but that category is probably the most important. Also, selecting options from the drop down can leave you hovering over a different company, which creates a new hover tooltip. That's pretty confusing. And a typo in the title: itsself
hackermann 13y ago
(From the link) Who can call "itsself" a true Global Innovator? lol...
casca 13y ago
Pretty use of D3.js. Obviously this is your business but it would be great if there was some sourcecode to share with the community. The report that the data is based on is not worth much. They claim to use Volume, Success, Global and Influence as measures. Apply this the Blackberry and Symantec and decide the value.
- oscilloscope 13y ago
  There's a step-by-step guide to creating this kind of animated chart by Jim Vallandingham. http://vallandingham.me/bubble_charts_in_d3.html http://vallandingham.me/bubble_charts_in_d3.html
aw3c2 13y ago
Why not add the country code into the circles? Right now it is relying on color alone and that is bad. Firstly there is no intuitive or learned connection between a color and a country and secondly it is problematic for people with bad color vision.
nkoren 13y ago
Visualization, shmisulization. Only so much that bouncy balls can do to sex up a strangely parochial list. No ARM, no Tesla. But Blackberry is on the list? Seriously? How many CEOs are currently asking themselves "how can we be more innovative, like Blackberry?"
- csmatt 13y ago
  A failure of Blackberry to have a respectable market share does not mean the company isn't innovative. I think any company with its back against the wall is probably attempting to be innovative at every turn.
  - nkoren 13y ago
    In theory, they certainly should be. However in practice that's not always the case. What significant innovations has Blackberry brought to market in the past three years (the timeframe this list covers)? Offhand I can't think of any. I haven't delved into the list's methodology, but at a glance it appears to basically be a count of in-house patents, which is a reasonable approximation of the amount of innovation a company produces multiplied by the number of patent lawyers on its payroll. If the second variable is large enough, the first one need not be that significant...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
danso 13y ago
I knew it. When I saw the title with "D3" and "sexy" (or some other over-used overhyped adjective), I just knew it was going to involve some non-sensical clump of animated balls. This is far less useful than even a simple table. If you're going to do balls in D3, at least do it with force: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/04/us/politics/democratic-convention-words.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/04/us/politics/de...
- notjustanymike 13y ago
  You're right. The best visualizations wouldn't care about the library used to build them. By putting D3 in the title, it becomes obvious the authors care more about the technology than the content.
notjustanymike 13y ago
It's a pretty stock force chart that would probably would have been a lot more useful as a horizontal bar chart. The industry breakout is useless without a legend since I have to switch to country breakout to understand what the colors mean. The circles don't quantify any data, especially unhelpful when you could have used the unique inventions metric to indicate a company's contribution. So yeah, this is sexy, but also quite useless.
jsmcgd 13y ago
Sorry to be a grump but I think we're actually worse off for having these very shallow and simplistic analyses of data. Also, patent != innovation. That being said aesthetically it's very pleasing and with some rigour there might be something of value here.

44 points by Charlesmigli 13y ago

Nice visualisation, but what's the value in this? Symantec's a "global innovator" (really? I'm skeptical, but am I missing something?) And splitting companies into "electronic components" and "computer hardware" seems dubious too, since there's presumably a lot of overlap.

edelans 13y ago
You should blame Thomson Reuter's report for that, as I understand it, this page is an attempt to make a boring ranking (http://top100innovators.com/ http://top100innovators.com/ ) into a sexier and more meaningful visualization.
k2enemy 13y ago
It isn't even a nice visualization. You have to hover over a ball to find out the company? An old fashioned list that can be grouped by country or industry would communicate the information much faster.

oscilloscope 13y ago

A couple critiques. The "No Breakout" view is almost meaningless. It would be more effective as a ranked list with words. If I take a screenshot of that, it means nothing. Circle positions, sizes, and colors encode no information in this initial view. The only way to get information is to hover, letting you browse the list in a disorganized fashion. It's not clear on load what colors represent. There are no labels whatsoever. The colors make more sense on the "Country Breakout", but you lose the context again if you go to the "Industry Breakout". The last breakout also seems somewhat arbitrary. According to this, Google is part of "Internet Search". Don't they make hardware and software as well? Is IBM still a hardware company? The lines are fuzzy, but this categorical view draws a sharp divide between different sectors. The graphic this is based on, Four Ways to Slice Obama's Budget Proposal, contains much more information and labels it well. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/13/us/politics/2013-budget-proposal-graphic.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/13/us/politics/20... Notice that circle area encodes proposed spending, which is a good measure of size/importance. The coloring is also a quantitative metric with an associated scale. When you go to the "Department Totals" view, you can see how the size/coloring reveals insights about proposed Defense spending (heavy cuts).

jere 13y ago
Yea, I was going to post that the initial No Breakout view conveys absolutely no information. The colors haven't yet been explained, the circles are all the same size, and... there are 100 of them (but we already know that). Hovering over dots to find more information is really low bandwith. Another point: the top category on the Industry Breakout view is obscured by the drop down. It wouldn't be such a big deal, but that category is probably the most important. Also, selecting options from the drop down can leave you hovering over a different company, which creates a new hover tooltip. That's pretty confusing. And a typo in the title: itsself

hackermann 13y ago

(From the link) Who can call "itsself" a true Global Innovator? lol...

casca 13y ago

Pretty use of D3.js. Obviously this is your business but it would be great if there was some sourcecode to share with the community. The report that the data is based on is not worth much. They claim to use Volume, Success, Global and Influence as measures. Apply this the Blackberry and Symantec and decide the value.

oscilloscope 13y ago
There's a step-by-step guide to creating this kind of animated chart by Jim Vallandingham. http://vallandingham.me/bubble_charts_in_d3.html http://vallandingham.me/bubble_charts_in_d3.html

aw3c2 13y ago

Why not add the country code into the circles? Right now it is relying on color alone and that is bad. Firstly there is no intuitive or learned connection between a color and a country and secondly it is problematic for people with bad color vision.

nkoren 13y ago

Visualization, shmisulization. Only so much that bouncy balls can do to sex up a strangely parochial list. No ARM, no Tesla. But Blackberry is on the list? Seriously? How many CEOs are currently asking themselves "how can we be more innovative, like Blackberry?"

csmatt 13y ago
A failure of Blackberry to have a respectable market share does not mean the company isn't innovative. I think any company with its back against the wall is probably attempting to be innovative at every turn.
- nkoren 13y ago
  In theory, they certainly should be. However in practice that's not always the case. What significant innovations has Blackberry brought to market in the past three years (the timeframe this list covers)? Offhand I can't think of any. I haven't delved into the list's methodology, but at a glance it appears to basically be a count of in-house patents, which is a reasonable approximation of the amount of innovation a company produces multiplied by the number of patent lawyers on its payroll. If the second variable is large enough, the first one need not be that significant...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

danso 13y ago

I knew it. When I saw the title with "D3" and "sexy" (or some other over-used overhyped adjective), I just knew it was going to involve some non-sensical clump of animated balls. This is far less useful than even a simple table. If you're going to do balls in D3, at least do it with force: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/04/us/politics/democratic-convention-words.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/04/us/politics/de...

notjustanymike 13y ago
You're right. The best visualizations wouldn't care about the library used to build them. By putting D3 in the title, it becomes obvious the authors care more about the technology than the content.

notjustanymike 13y ago

It's a pretty stock force chart that would probably would have been a lot more useful as a horizontal bar chart. The industry breakout is useless without a legend since I have to switch to country breakout to understand what the colors mean. The circles don't quantify any data, especially unhelpful when you could have used the unique inventions metric to indicate a company's contribution. So yeah, this is sexy, but also quite useless.

jsmcgd 13y ago

Sorry to be a grump but I think we're actually worse off for having these very shallow and simplistic analyses of data. Also, patent != innovation. That being said aesthetically it's very pleasing and with some rigour there might be something of value here.