NEW YORK: Target, 3M and Google are among the "highly adaptive" companies that have prospered in spite of fluctuating economic conditions, largely due to their unique capabilities, a study has argued.

The Boston Consulting Group analysed the market capitalisation of 2,500 US public corporations across 59 industries, focusing on the seven "most turbulent" business quarters experienced by these sectors.

Target, the retailer, posted an index score of 105 points, on a scale where 100 represented the average category result, and each point above this benchmark equated to outperforming the norm by a whole percentage point.

It was credited with using internal and external data to construct "guest portraits", mining deeper insights like purchase "inflection points", and tailoring promotions to individual buyers based on the findings.

Such "signal-reading tactics" helped the company boost sales by 17% and earnings before interest and taxes by 6% from 2006–11, figures that stood at 4% and –7% for its industry as a whole respectively.

3M, the conglomerate, logged 108 points, aided by its "superior economics of experimentation", the BCG study said. As an example, in 2009, when the downturn peaked, products launched in the previous five years still yielded a full 29% of sales.

Alongside letting staff commit 15% of their time to pet projects, 3M holds regular forums for generating new ideas, allocates "seed funding" to strong proposals, and tolerates failure when schemes don't succeed.

Google, the online giant, secured 107 points, a total attributed in part to an "organisational advantage" premised on a relatively flat business structure and using "flexible, diverse and modular" teams.

Employees can also vote on the projects they see as the most promising, and the firm also works to minimise bureaucracy. Its market capitalisation rose by 62% in the assessment period, versus a decline of 27% for the online software and services sector.

For its part, Amazon, the online retailer, received 102 points, supported by a "systems advantage" that has seen the firm consistently develop new features on its ecommerce platform.

"The preferences and trust of ... customers, combined with Amazon's rigorous process of experimentation, drive a continual evolution of the system," the study said. "Amazon also enhances the platform through real-time testing of its homepage design, ranking algorithms, and search results."

Elsewhere, Waste Management, previously a landfill specialist, has moved into fields such as recycling and renewable energy, and was thus regarded as a pioneer of the "ecosocial" model. It scored 101 points.

Data sourced from Boston Consulting Group; additional content by Warc staff