top 10
Advertising
1. Wieden+Kennedy For sending Bud Light to Westeros and dreaming further for Nike at the Women’s World Cup
2. McCann World-group For changing the game for over-looked communities
3. BBDO For partnering with Monica Lewinsky to tackle toxic online behavior and cyberbullying
4. Giant Spoon For putting depression treatment to music
5. Observatory For befriending pets for Refinery29
6. Anomaly For spurring action on the Grenfell fire in London by shaming Parliament with projection ads
7. VMLY&R For buying Poland’s oldest porn mag and devoting its last issue to female empowerment
8. The&Partnership For going long for Lexus in a 60,000-hour doc
9. TBWA Worldwide For making the city bounce for Apple AirPods
10. Droga5 For telling the truth about The New York Times
Africa
1. Twiga Foods For professionalizing East Africa’s informal market economy
2. mPedigree For using text messages to root out fake goods
3. Copia Global For allowing Kenya’s unbanked and unconnected to participate in e-commerce
4. PiggyVest For helping West African millennials save and invest for the future
5. MPost For turning mobile phone numbers into Kenyan PO boxes
6. Tizeti For harnessing the power of the sun for an affordable 4G network in Nigeria
7. Tongoro For empowering local artisans via a Senegalese fashion house
8. Lumkani For bringing fire protection and insurance services to South African townships
9. Kobo360 For connecting Nigerian truck drivers with companies in need
10. 54gene For building an Africa-wide genetic biobank
Architecture
1. Studio Gang Architects For building with cities, not for them
2. Snøhetta For pioneering carbon-negative buildings that generate more energy than they consume
3. Olson Kundig For redesigning the cemetery
4. New Story For developing resilient houses alongside underserved communities
5. WRNS Studio For making net-zero energy buildings a net positive at the Stevens Library and Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus
6. Lever Architecture For leading the way in actually designing timber buildings, such as Adidas’s new HQ expansion
7. Foster + Partners For transforming Apple Stores in Miami and NYC into community plazas
8. KieranTimberlake For figuring out where an office is cold or drafty with its Roast survey app, so issues can be fixed
9. Nendo For applying its Japanese product-design aesthetic to architecture projects such as Tokyo’s Kojimachi Terrace, which features a “sky forest”
10. Gh3 For jumping into the world of natural, chemical-free pools
Artificial Intelligence
1. Graphcore For enabling the next generation of AI applications with its Intelligent Processing Unit AI chip
2. Persado For tutoring clients like Chase to fluency in marketing-speak
3. LivePerson For becoming a maven in discerning customer intent via messaging apps
4. Viz.ai For catalyzing care after a patient’s stroke
5. Nvidia For converting sketches into finished images with its GauGAN technology
6. Hive For bringing savvy to measuring the value of TV advertising and sponsorship
7. Syntiant For moving processing power to the smallest devices, with its low-power chips that handle voice interactions
8. Wint For plugging leaks that waste water
9. Interactions For serving restaurants an intelligent order taker across app, phone, and drive-through
10. Kasisto For giving birth to Kai (born from the same Stanford research as Siri), who has become a finance whiz
Asia-Pacific
1. Zilingo For connecting merchants to fashion’s supply chain—and winning the right to sell Disney-branded goods
For enabling global brands such as
