CNBC's Disruptor 50

In the second annual Disruptor 50 list, CNBC features private companies in 27 industries—from aerospace to enterprise software to retail—whose innovations are revolutionizing the business landscape. These forward-thinking upstarts have identified unexploited niches in the marketplace that have the potential to become billion-dollar businesses, and they rushed to fill them. In the process, they are creating new ecosystems for their products and services. Unseating corporate giants is no easy feat. But we ranked those venture capital–backed companies doing the best job. Already it's hard to think of the world without them. Read more about the list ranking and the methodology.

1 SpaceX The company that wants to send you to space and colonize Mars.
2. Warby Parker Taking on the Luxottica eyewear machine.
3 Etsy A big voice for small artisans.
10 Uber The 21st-century taxi service.

18 Quirky Crowdsourcing an idea for basement tinkerers.

32 Pinterest The world's bulletin board.

Five of the companies on our Disruptor 50 are from abroad. These areDropbox (Ireland), Fon (Spain), Nexmo and TransferWise (U.K.) andSpotify (Luxembourg).

Ten of the 2013 Disruptor 50 have "graduated" since the list was published last June, with names likeTwitter and Castlight Health going public; and Tumblr, Nest, WhatsApp and more getting big-dollar buyouts from Yahoo, Google, Facebook and others.

Disruption is the only way to stay relevant, meaningful and profitable over the long run. Very few companies disrupt anything at all, but some companies, like Apple and Google, have disrupted markets time and time again. What do they know about the art of disruption that other companies don't? Here are the principles they follow.

Make meaning. The raison d'etre of disruption is the desire to make meaning. This requires powerful perspectives, like "changing the world" and "making the world a better place." For example, Apple changed the world by democratizing computing, and Google made the world a better place by democratizing information.

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