Is Google Coming Of Age?

An article in the Wall Street Journal last week explained at length how Google intends to build a process to make sure that the high priority ideas that it develops receive the right resourcing.

The article was perhaps spawned by Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt who said, "We were concerned that some of the biggest ideas were getting squashed".

It appears that Google intends to create "innovation reviews" at which department heads will share their promising ideas with Google’s top leadership, in the hope that it will help executives focus their attention, and their resources on promising ideas as early on as possible.

The personal benefits that Google employees receive are legendary, and the company actively encourages;

• Engineers to dream up their own pet projects in their spare time.
• Teams to self-form around the best ideas.
• Focus on market-based principles, so that the best ideas will receive funding.

Gary Hamel, who is considered by many to be a management guru praised Google in his book ‘The Future of Management’, and recommended that more and more companies adopt Google’s market-based system.

And Why Not?

Google’s approach is interesting to say the least, because it ensures that ideas, and even those that aren’t suited to Google, get attention and consideration.

But Does Google’s Modus Operandi Work?

Sadly, it would seem that it doesn’t.

More than 95% of Google’s income still comes from web-based search advertising, and the company hasn’t moved into anything new, and it is now being challenged by Microsoft’s "Bing" in the one area where it presently dominates

Google did create innovation however, but at its own expense.

Twitter was created by former Google employees!

So What Is Google’s Problem?

Until now, it did not discipline the innovation process.

Many people think that constraints inhibit innovation, and they can, but they can also stimulate it.

How?

They can force people to focus creativity, where it’s needed most.

I don’t believe that Google is giving up on its ground-breaking ideas, but it does seem that it’s trying to create a happy marriage between innovation and discipline.

We will wait, and the future will reveal the market’s judgment.

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