Business And Engineering Students Name The 10 Most Innovative Companies

A good salary, great culture, and awesome perks go a long way towards attracting top talent. But many of the most driven and desirable employees want more.

"It is becoming extremely important to be seen as an innovative employer if you want to win the top talent," says Petter Nylander, the CEO of employer branding consultancy Universum. "When we ask the students about top associations with their ideal employers, innovation is one of the most common words."

As part of its annual survey of how the next generation of employees regards America's biggest companies, Universum asked both business and engineering students which companies they thought were the most innovative employers out there.

Interestingly, both business and engineering students put tech giants Apple and Google at the top.

Business students also highly rated companies like 3M, General Electric, and Nike. 3M was the first company to explicitly give employees 15% of their time to pursue independent, innovative projects. General Electric has the world's oldest and best-known corporate university, and Nike has one of the most committed workforces out there.

Here are the top 10 according to business students:

1. Apple
2. Google
3. 3M
4. NASA
5. Daimler/Mercedes-Benz
6. BMW Group
7. Honda Companies
8. General Electric
9. SAS Institute
10. Nike

For engineers, who have their pick of top companies, having an innovative employer is essential. Out of 40 areas that they graded employers on in the survey, innovation was listed as the second-most important.

And while business students picked several car companies, engineering students seem to prefer places that make slightly larger machines, naming companies like UTC Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. All emphasize and invest in research, which may be why engineers rate them so highly.

Here are the top 10 according to engineering students:

1. Google
2. Apple
3. NASA
4. UTC
5. Bose
6. Lockheed Martin Corporation
7. Autodesk
8. 3M
9. Genentech
10. Boeing