Bangalore: Fast Company today announced its third annual Best Workplaces for Innovators list, honoring businesses and organizations that demonstrate a deep commitment to encouraging innovation at all levels of their organization. ThoughtSpot, the Modern Analytics Cloud company, came in at No. 34 as a result of the company’s dedication to fostering a culture of invention. This culture was evidenced by ThoughtSpot’s rapid transformation to a pure cloud company, including building and launching ThoughtSpot Cloud, the organization’s first SaaS offering in just six months.
Developed in collaboration with Accenture, the 2021 Best Workplaces for Innovators ranks 100 winners from a variety of industries, including computer science, biotech, consumer packaged goods, nonprofit, education, financial services, cybersecurity, and engineering. Working together, Fast Company editors and Accenture researchers scored nearly 1,500 applications, and a panel of eight eminent judges reviewed and endorsed the top 100 companies. The 2021 awards feature workplaces from around the world with several of the honorees based outside the U.S.
“The last year presented challenges for businesses who needed fundamentally new ways to create, consume, and build businesses on data-driven insights. We’ve been there with them every step of the way, bringing multiple new innovations to market faster than ever. Whether it was our SaaS offering, our new developer platform ThoughtSpot Everywhere, or our acquisitions of SeekWell and Diyotta, we’ve been relentless on bringing new capabilities to ThoughtSpot,” said Ajeet Singh, cofounder & Executive Chairman, ThoughtSpot. “We couldn’t have done this without the culture of innovation that is at the core of ThoughtSpot. I’m incredibly proud of our employees who rallied together to build something new for our customers and the industry at large. We’re thrilled to receive today’s recognition honoring innovation during a time when our industry needed it most.”
“One of the most rewarding parts of being at ThoughtSpot is the innovation from every member of the company. We’re always thinking about what’s next for the data ecosystem, listening to our customers, and creating new capabilities to help them build their businesses on data,” said Kirsten Stark, Staff Engineer, Cloud Platform, ThoughtSpot. “Seeing our SaaS offering go from idea during Codex, our hackathon, to live with customers in just six months shows the dedication of the team to continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.”
In the beginning of the pandemic, ThoughtSpot held Codex, a company-wide hackathon to create a platform for employees to collaborate on the new cloud platform. Employees ranging from sales to customer success to engineers participated. The top projects and ideas then received financial support and resourcing as they were built into the ThoughtSpot platform. In the course of six months, ThoughtSpot’s SaaS offering went from ideation, to beta testing, to general availability.
The innovation continued with the December 2020 release of the company’s most substantial update to the platform’s search capabilities, and ThoughtSpot Everywhere, a developer-friendly platform to build interactive data apps powered by the Modern Analytics Cloud. Both products were ideated from the same hackathon collaboration which saw the development of the SaaS offering.
In addition to the launch of its new products, ThoughtSpot was recognized for its culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, which includes a patent rewards program as well as leadership and entrepreneurship learning opportunities for all employees.
“These leaders and teams created cultures of innovation and sustained them, even as remote work extended into 2021,” says Stephanie Mehta, editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “This newest list of the Best Workplaces for Innovators honors those organizations that found ways to collaborate and invent despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, ensuring employees were at the forefront.”