Today the S&P/BusinessWeek have launched a Global Innovation Index to let investors track the performance and participate in the growth of “leading edge, innovative public companies.”

The 25 companies within the index are the winners of the BusinessWeek/Boston Consulting Group Most Innovative Companies Rankings

Methodology

-Based on a senior management survey about innovation and was distributed electronically to executives.
-The survey consisted of 20 general questions on innovation and an optional 12 questions focused on innovation metrics.
-Stock returns, revenue growth, margin growth and patent citation index was looked at in the selection process.
-The patent citation index reflects how often the company’s patents filed over the past five years have been cited as a basis for other innovation. The number is calculated by adding, for all patents filed between 2001 and 2005, the number of times each patent or application has been cited or mentioned by other patents up until December 31, 2006.

The Innovation Index’s rise or fall is calculated at the end of each trading day, and the results are posted online the next morning.

“Innovation is proving to be the key defining factor for the world’s most successful corporations, and the Global Innovation Index is a new measure of that success.”

See Here:
BusinessWeek - Slideshow: 50 Most Innovative Companies

On another index note, Project for excellence in journalism run a great news index:
“Over time, the PEJ news coverage index will tell us how stories ebbed and flowed, how the character or narrative focus of the story changed, and, stepping back one level further, what broad topic categories get more coverage than others (does global warming get more coverage than land use).”
See PEJ news index for week Jan 28 - Feb 3 Here
Read full methodology here