A lot is written about innovative companies and their visionary leaders yet most of these stories focus on the usual group of companies: Apple, Starbucks or Google. Telling stories of this small group of “elite innovators” is easy but to gain new insights one has to go beyond this group of companies to discover something new.

FastCompany recently published their 2008 ranking of the world’s most innovative companies and the list provides fresh insights into innovation beyond the “usual suspects”. They are of course included but most interesting are the stories about the less known innovators.

Here is a selection of a few of these companies, the full list can be found online at Fast Company “Presenting the 2008 Fast 50“:

#13 AFFYMETRIX

Imagine going for a half-hour doctor’s visit and coming out with a treatment plan tailored to your unique genetic blueprint. That’s the vision at Santa Clara, California-based Affymetrix, which makes lab tests that scan tissue samples for variations in thousands of genes. The company banked an estimated $405 million in revenue last year, a payday spurred by the Amplichip test — developed in partnership with Roche Diagnostics — which identifies people who metabolize drugs slowly and therefore are especially vulnerable to side effects. Now the race is on to develop advanced tests for genetic predisposition to heart disease and the most common types of cancer.

#30 OMNITURE (See Full Profile)

Omniture is like an intelligence upgrade for the Web. It provides thousands of clients, from Bank of America to JetBlue, with real-time information about how visitors use their Web sites; those visitors, meanwhile, find an increasingly personal experience rooted in previous behavior and interests. And the data derived from this sort of high-IQ interaction have made Omniture an essential tool for improving its return on online ad spending.Last year, it managed $500 million in keyword spending that led to $10 billion in actual commerce. “We want to change the online experience,” CEO Josh James says. “If consumers are happy, everyone is happy.” James certainly is: Omniture grew about 80% in 2007, with sales topping $140 million.

#43 AIRASIA (See Full Profile)

Seven years ago, former music exec Tony Fernandes paid 25 cents for an ailing carrier with two creaky planes and $12 million in debt. Today, AirAsia’s bottom-of-the-pyramid strategy has created one of the world’s fastest-growing, most-profitable carriers, with the lowest operating costs in the industry and fares as cheap as $3. “It’s like our bus,” says Yap Choo Ying, who runs a market stall in eastern Malaysia and now regularly jets to Kuala Lumpur to see her grandkids. In November, the Malaysian company made a risky bet by going long-haul, adding flights to Australia; this year, it will add flights to China and India, where billions of people have yet to take to the skies.

#48 AKQA (See Full Profile)

Most interactive-ad shops master either the creative or the technical; AKQA is expert at both. Whether building a Pixar-quality interactive online universe for Coke’s breathtaking “Happiness Factory” campaign (below), or masterminding a multimedia “alternate reality game” for Microsoft’s Halo 3, the digital powerhouse doesn’t just dream up mind-bending ideas, it actually writes the code that brings them to life. Which is why, after five consecutive years of profitability, AKQA is one of the most dangerous global forces in the ad industry. While ad holding companies and tech firms spent billions in 2007 to snap up digital shops, AKQA fended them off, opting instead for a $250 million investment from private-equity firm General Atlantic. In the meantime, the 700-person agency boosted revenues 39% to $100 million and added new clients such as Unilever, DoubleClick, and Cadbury Schweppes — on top of existing accounts with Nike and McDonald’s.

Subscribe here to automatically receive the next article via eMail.