Innovation at Google Part II: Creative Chaos
Last time I talked about what I think Google’s ultimate goal is for the open wireless spectrum. Today let’s look at the rest of the Douglas Merrill video :
Focused On Hard Problems
You can learn a lot of Google’s innovation methodology from the video. First and foremost they target customer experience - putting all the information in the world at your fingertips. But not far behind is their creative business model - through Adsense and Adwords, transform the online community into a network of business partners. Right now Google seems consumed with the hard problems not yet solved - how to make information not yet on the web accessible (searching book content, access on mobile devices, handling offline content).
Like most companies, Google institutes both incremental sustaining innovations (like search refinements) alongside transformational innovations (running on cheap hardware to yield a 10000-fold price benefit). They are intensely customer focused: “Don’t ask customers what they want - ask them what problems they have.” They also use a bewildering variety of diagnostics to gather and interpret customer usage data, which they use to target innovation.
Kickstarting Innovation From Within
Finally, the video discusses how they foster innovation internally. For most companies building an innovative organization is a huge challenge. Google has built an environment that supports innovation not by doing one or two big things but by doing dozens of little things:
- “Live out loud,” talk about everything, encourage lots of small group interaction and discussion
- Encourage diverse perspectives
- Free meals are a perk, but serve the ultimate purpose of getting people around the table collaborating
- Reward risk, don’t punish failure - the dire alternative is to disincentive creativity
- Spend 20% of your time on your own projects - a process that has produced Gmail and Google News
- Chaos breeds creativity - diverge with lots of off the wall ideas before converging on the ones that show the most promise
- Empower users to innovate on the Google platform
- Encourage employees to use Google products - helps debug and make products better
- Leadership is most important for achieving diversity - HR processes need to support risktaking and innovation
Can you think of many other companies that put this much emphasis on innovation? How many companies provide free meals or let employees devote 20 percent of their time on pet projects? Google has focused a great deal of innovation on their enabling processes - the things that help them hire and cultivate a motivated, innovative workforce.
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4 Responses to “Innovation at Google Part II: Creative Chaos”
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The social phenomena in Mountain View is amazing. I know people who will go to the Google campus and share their ideas just because it is such an inviting arena. And I have always said that those who eat together, share together. Small scale innovations like 3M first came up with, that you are to spend an amount of time on your own projects is great because it lets you do your own thing and on your own time.
I wish that more companies would adopt a stategy that leans towards innovation in ways like this.
[...] My last article on Google illustrates this philosophy in action. They’ve focused innovation on their enabling processes to create a unique employee experience and an environment that nurtures and rewards creativity. They get to apply 20 percent of their time to pet projects, they are given ample opportunity to collaborate with others over free meals, and their HR processes reward risk. Who wouldn’t want to work there? Do you think they have trouble competing with others for talent? [...]
[...] it was a small startup, it had the ability to create a culture of innovation from the ground up, much like Google did. Challenge assumptions, be daring, do things no one else has [...]
[...] it was a small startup, it had the ability to create a culture of innovation from the ground up, much like Google did. Challenge assumptions, be daring, do things no one else has [...]