Innovations in skin care are up over 10%, shows Thomson Reuters data
The report analyses patent data from 12 industry sectors to gauge innovation on a global scale and to gain a better understanding of the research behind the new ideas and the economic growth to come.
“2015 was the year of many innovative firsts,” writes Vincent J. Caraher, president of Thomson Reuters IP & Science, in his introduction to the report. “In fact, innovation over the last year was one of the most active in history with double-digit growth of 13.7 percent.”
Top ten beauty innovators
According to State of Innovation report, the 10 cosmetics and beauty brands innovating most worldwide are:
1. LG -Household & Healthcare
2. L'Oreal
3. Kao
4. Henkel
5. P&G
6. AmorePacific
7. Aesthetic Beijing Technology
8. Unilever
9. Beiersdorf
10. Kose
On this list, only P&G is headquartered in the States. That company received 144 beauty industry patents last year, not half as many as South Korea’s LG, which had 315 inventions on the books for 2015.
Looking at subcategories globally reveals that innovations in skin care grew 12% from 5,407 in 2014 to 6,063 last year. And skin care accounted for just over 40% of global innovations in the industry.
Innovations in makeup declined by 2% last year. In perfume, there was a 15% drop. And in the antiperspirant category a 4% lag in innovation when compared to 2014.
Behind the ideas
Before the patents and the products and the revenue, comes research. Looking at 10 years of published papers, the Thomson Reuters IP & Science business unit concluded that Brazil—more precisely, the University of Sao Paulo—is the most prolific in terms of research that informs cosmetic product innovation. Between 2005 and 2015, that institution published 177 relevant papers according to Web of Science data share by Thomson Reuters. Brazil’s State University of Campinas published 78 research papers in the same interval.
And the US (when publishing entities are grouped) generated even more new science. Between the FDA, P&G, Cosmetic Ingredient Review, Harvard University, the University of California Los Angeles, and the University of California San Francisco, 534 qualifying papers were published between 2005 and 2015.
Reflecting on the data, the Thomson Reuters team concludes that, “in the US, it’s a combination of consumer-product and chemical companies that are driving beautification.”
