KONE, a global leader in the elevator and escalator industry, has been ranked as one of the world's most innovative companies by Forbes. This is for the sixth consecutive year that the company has made it to the world's most innovative companies list, inside the Top 100. This year, KONE ranked 56th, making it the 8th most innovative company in Europe. What’s more, it is also the only elevator and escalator company featured on the list.   “Innovation has been at the core of KONE’s business, said, Amit Gossain, Managing Director, KONE India. “We are proud to have been recognised for our innovation.” He added, “At KONE, we have mapped our innovation focus areas by carefully understanding universal needs for sustainable and smart urban development in order to come a step closer to our customer.”    The company is celebrating the 20th anniversary of MonoSpace (machine-room-less elevator) this year, to mark its contribution to the industry and its role in influencing the culture of innovation at KONE. In 1995, it installed the first machine-room-less KONE MonoSpace elevators featuring new revolutionary gearless hoisting technology. While the KONE EcoDisc drastically reduced energy consumption and provided gearless ride comfort for residential buildings, its installation methods took safety to a new level.   And, KONE UltraRope is a completely new hoisting technology that eliminates the disadvantages of conventional steel rope by using carbon fibre, enabling elevator ride to double up to 1 km, thus opening up a world of possibilities in high-rise building design – an important consideration as urbanisation brings increasing numbers of people to cities. Nearly 600 buildings of 200 m or more are currently under construction or planned to be built over the next few years, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Additionally, there are some 3,000 buildings in the world that could benefit from modernisation with KONE UltraRope.   With real-time insight about the operation of its equipment, KONE plans to drive further innovation and develop new solutions and services to improve the flow of people in some of the world’s busiest cities and buildings. Using IBM’s open standards-based Watson IoT Cloud platform, KONE plans to allow a vast developer ecosystem via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to build new applications to make a smoother, safer and more personalised people flow experience for building users. The company is embedding intelligence across its operations and driving a wave of innovation in smarter buildings.   As it understands the demands and the changing trends of urbanisation, KONE believes that it has a great potential to add value to its customers and society at large. It would in turn, make contribution to rising living standards, in the most sustainable ways.