And the 10 most innovative companies in retail are…

A drugstore chain leads the annual ranking of the top 10 most innovative companies in retail by consumer publication Fast Company. (For the first time, Fast Company enlisted machine intelligence to help inform the list: Quid, a San Francisco-based startup, used its software to create topographical maps of innovation across more than 40 sectors of the economy.).



Here is a brief review of the Fast Company rankings, which mixes the familiar — Target and Amazon — with such upstarts as Casper, an online mattress retailer that offers a 100-day trial period (click here for the complete summary):



1. CVS Health: For reinventing the pharmacy;



2 .Amazon: For quietly becoming a cloud giant;



3. Warby Parker: For opening eyes around the world;



4. Farfetch: For putting the world’s best boutique fashion retailers on a global stage;



5. Everlane: For reinventing affordable basics;



6. Kit and Ace: For designing luxe casual-wear from next-generation performance fabrics;



7. Shopify: For enabling every business to pursue a “retail everywhere” strategy;



8. Pinterest: For deploying a variety of buttons to make its pins more affordable;



9. Casper: For reducing the headache of getting a mattress to your door (and up the stairs); and



10. Target: For treating its stores like an innovation lab.