Lessons from Google

By ian

At SXSWi, all attendees can pick up the “Big Bag”, a canvas bag filled with marketing stuff. Most people either don’t pick it up or get it and promptly trash the contents and keep the bag. Kelley and I go through each piece and check everything out. We get to see what other companies in the industry are doing and how they’re marketing and there are usually some decent freebies. This year, one of the freebies was an issue of FastCompany.

Normally, business magazines aren’t my cup of tea, but I through in the read later pile. Over the past few days I’ve been reading it, specifically an article about why they selected Google as the most innovative company in their fast50 list. It’s an interesting look at some of the people behind Google and it’s really something I think everybody in technology should read. Google is dedicated to relentless innovation. Not the ROI driven, VC friendly, top-down innovation that so many companies believe in, but rather the risky, bottom-up, team-wide innovation that leads to real breakthroughs.

The executive chef, Josef DeSimone, summarized this philosophy best:

“My impression was, ‘Wow, you hire a guy who’s an expert in food and let him run with it! You don’t get in his way or micromanage.’ After a year or so, I realized this is the way everything works here.”We

So, if you want to be the next Google, you really only need to follow 2 steps:

1. Hire the right people
2. Let them do their thing

Sounds easy. Two steps and you’re there. Unfortunately, those 2 steps are very difficult. There are plenty of articles from business people about innovation and Google’s approach, but having no business experience gives me a slightly different viewpoint. So, for the few people that read my blog, here’s a viewpoint from the trenches.

Step 1: Hiring the Right People

This is a huge pain in the ass. The traits that define the people that are going to help a team innovate are difficult to determine through a resume and a 30 minute interview. It’s also tough because some of these traits may not be conducive to day-to-day productivity. Exploring a new idea or solving a problem isn’t something that happens in 10 minutes. Innovation takes time and effort. When working under tight deadlines and time is scarce, large-scale innovation is the enemy. Many people who are successful at typical companies are good at micro-innovations. They can solve a tricky SQL query in a few minutes or work out a bug before lunch, but these abilities are usually not relevant to large scale innovation.

Step 2 : Let them Innovate

Again, this step seems easy, but there’s a lot to it. There can be a lot of risks associated with letting the team run amok. I know that I’ve come up with a lot of great ideas. I’ve also come up with a bunch of crap ideas. The most challenging part is that it’s often difficult to tell what kind of idea it is until it’s already done. Not a problem with the SQL query, but it’s a much bigger deal when it’s a critical project that fails. Google can afford to pay a dozen people to work on a failure for a few weeks, but most small businesses can’t afford this. As a result, most companies are reluctant to pursue every innovative idea that pops up.

An Idea for a Solution

Many people have a highly idealized idea of innovation. We imaging some brilliant thinker pondering the world’s great problems having a Eureka moment and envisioning an elegant solution. In reality, even at Google, innovation is usually the result of research, brainstorming, discussion and lots of coffee.

This is a good sign for small companies. Nobody said that these arduous steps towards innovation need to happen instantly. Instead of dropping everything and moving towards a new idea, take your time. Leverage the times when your team is least productive and create times for innovation. Monday mornings, Friday afternoons and just about any day after lunch are times when the team is not really focusing on work. This is a great time to brainstorm and think about innovative new ideas.

Innovation doesn’t have to come in giant leaps either. When you have a new idea that warrants time and effort, try to make this effort useful in multiple ways. Try to leverage aspects of the research or development of the new idea for shorter term goals. For example, I’m currently working on a project that involves an extensive data visualization system. I’m building that system with the larger picture in mind, but in a way that we can start using it for projects in the near future. Similarly, researching your users and their habits can lead to insight into future projects as well as ideas for current work.