/corporate hat on
Fast Company just named Ubisoft as one of the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies (with a shout out to the Anvil engine and to the PoP team on the click-thru). I'm fucking proud of it, so despite that fact that some of you will call me a corporate shill, I'm going to blog about it anyway.
Yves Guillemot has always said that innovation and creativity were important pillars for us, and I must admit I have had the good fortune to be able to benefit from this stance in my creative life. Trying to innovate is something I've always pushed hard for in everything I've done. I know a lot of other people have too. We've invested a lot in innovation over the years and consequently have had to learn to embrace the risks that come with that (and we've also taken our share of the bumps that accompany them) so it feels good to finally get a shout-out for it.
It's especially encouraging given the current economic situation to have a nod like this even as Yves reasserts the importance of creativity and innovation instead of backpedalling to a 'safer' stance as (in my opinion) other more 'reactionary' CEO's might do. It means the light flickering through the smoke over the trenches is actually the sunlight of victory and not more incoming tracer-fire.
Even though such a list is a little arbitrary, it's also cool to see who they've ranked us ahead of and who they've ranked us behind.
So bye-bye Lego and watch out Microsoft and Wal-Mart.
/corporate hat off
I've always thought of Ubisoft as one of the more innovative pubs out there. Even back when I was with a HW vendor and we did some work on POD, they got a lot of press by doing a lot of experimentation with what at the time was leading edge tech (different graphics chips, MMX, etc).
As Ubi's grown up to be 'one of the big boys', it's really amazing that the innovation has stayed and resisted the risk-aversion that you'd expect would creep in. Good job Yves and the rest of the leadership for making this the case.
Keep it up Ubi! Go Go Go!
Posted by: Kim | February 19, 2009 at 01:19 PM
Ubi rocks.. are u working with ubisoft by any chance? Do reply back..
Posted by: Sanket Farande | April 03, 2009 at 12:10 PM