When was the last time you sat quietly and let something truly sink in?
I had one of those moments recently. I was scrolling through the Thinkers360 announcement for their 2026 Top 50 Thought Leading Companies on Innovation, half-expecting to scan through the usual suspects and close the tab. Then I saw it. FAVORIOT. Right there in the list. Alphabetically sandwiched between the giants of the global technology and consulting world.
I had to read it twice.
Thinkers360 is not a popularity contest. It is not the kind of list you get onto by having a big marketing budget or by gaming social media algorithms. That is precisely what makes it different from most rankings out there. Their leaderboard is powered by a patented algorithm that evaluates companies based on authentic, personally authored thought leadership content, which includes articles, books, keynotes, media interviews, podcasts, whitepapers, and speaking engagements. You cannot buy your way in. You cannot inflate your score with fake followers or reshared third-party content. What counts is what your people genuinely know and are willing to share with the world.
So when FAVORIOT appeared alongside Microsoft, PwC, Mastercard, Tata Consultancy Services, HCLTech, and ServiceNow, I did not feel triumphant in the way you might after winning a business pitch. I felt something quieter and deeper than that. I felt grateful, and I felt a kind of responsibility.
Let me put this into context, because context matters enormously here.
FAVORIOT is a Malaysian company. We are not a billion-dollar multinational. We did not emerge from Silicon Valley or London or Singapore’s Orchard Road. We were built in Kuala Lumpur, by a team that believes deeply in the power of IoT to transform how cities are managed, how industries are monitored, and how businesses make decisions with real-time data. We have been doing this since 2017, quietly and consistently, publishing our thoughts, sharing our frameworks, speaking at conferences, writing when others are sleeping, and building a body of knowledge that goes far beyond what our company size might suggest.
And I think that is exactly the point.
Thought leadership has never been about size. It has always been about substance. It has always been about the courage to have a perspective, to write it down, to share it publicly, and to do so consistently even when the audience is small and the applause is quiet.
I remember the early days of FAVORIOT, when I would publish an article about IoT adoption in developing markets and wonder if anyone was reading. I remember speaking at regional conferences where I was one of the few voices pushing the narrative that Southeast Asia did not have to be a technology consumer, we could be a technology contributor. I believed that deeply, and I kept writing, kept speaking, kept building.
What Thinkers360 has done with this ranking is validate something I have always believed: that genuine expertise, consistently shared, eventually finds its audience. Their methodology deliberately looks beyond social media reach and evaluates the full body of work a company produces. The articles your team writes. The keynotes your leaders deliver. The books, the whitepapers, the podcasts, the depth of contribution to the global conversation. That is a hard score to fake, and I am proud that FAVORIOT earned it the hard way.
Being the only Malaysian company on this list carries a weight I do not take lightly. This is not just a FAVORIOT achievement. It is a moment for the Malaysian technology ecosystem to recognise that we belong in the global conversation, not as observers, but as contributors. Our ideas about IoT, smart cities, and enterprise connectivity are not local curiosities. They are relevant globally, and this recognition confirms it.
Standing in the same list as PwC, a firm with over 360,000 employees across 151 countries, or Microsoft, which shapes the technology infrastructure of virtually every organisation on earth, is not something I will pretend feels ordinary. It is extraordinary. But it also tells me something important: the criteria that matter, depth of thought, consistency of publishing, willingness to educate and elevate an industry, those criteria do not require a headcount of thousands. They require commitment.
I often tell my team that we are not just building an IoT platform. We are building a body of thought. We are documenting what works, sharing what does not, and contributing to a global understanding of how connected technologies can solve real problems for real people in real cities. Every article published, every keynote delivered, every insight shared on LinkedIn or our blog is a brick in that structure.
Today, Thinkers360 has told us that structure is visible. That it stands tall enough to be counted among the world’s most influential companies in innovation.
What comes next matters more than the recognition itself. We will continue writing. We will continue speaking. We will continue challenging assumptions about what IoT can do and who gets to lead that conversation. And we will continue carrying the Malaysian flag into rooms where, honestly, not many have taken it before.
If you are building something in this part of the world, something real, something you believe in, and you are doing the quiet, consistent work of sharing your knowledge with the world, I want you to know this: it accumulates. It compounds. And one day, it gets seen.
Are you investing in thought leadership the same way you invest in your product? Because in the end, the companies that shape industries are the ones that shape the conversation first.
Explore the full Thinkers360 50 Thought Leading Companies on Innovation 2026 list. If your organization is building something worth sharing, the global conversation is still wide open, and the world is still listening.
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