Introduction
Innovation is regarded as a significant determinant of economic growth and industrial development. The ability to create economic value in the market through the introduction of new products or services, redesigning existing processes, or even by means of customizing organizational operations helps to gain competitive advantage and value for firms, industries, and economies as a whole (Feldman, 2004). As Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, profoundly stated ‘Every new thing creates, two new opportunities’; to illustrate the significance of innovation, not in just technical ways but also in terms of business, society, management and urbanization.
The trend of innovation is also hampering the growth of firms, if not dealt with it strategically. Every new season, something new comes around, and becomes a trend-making all other innovative processes, products, or services obsolete. The question here arises, how to best synchronize and allocate resources to produce, market, and sustain innovation? To answer this question, the article undertakes Google Inc. and analyses in terms of highlighting several strategies and philosophies.
Background of the Company
Google is a multinational American company, which specializes mostly in products and services related to the internet (Duhigg, 2016). The most prominent products and services include the Search engine and Android Software. The company is headquartered in Mount View, California, United States of America. It was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Wirtz, 2019). According to Google (2019), the mission of the company is organizing information at the global level and making it more useful and universally accessible. Google is one of the most innovative companies in the world; the company encourages its employees to be more creative with policies such as the ‘20% rule’. Through this rule, the employees are required to spend 20% of their time on side projects. This policy has been beneficial for the company as it has helped the company develop some of the most popular products/ services, such as Gmail and Google Maps (Robinson, 2019).
Innovation Strategies & Philosophies
Google places great emphasis on the role of innovation and creativity within the company; therefore, the company applies eight policies for better results (Google, 2014). The first strategy is ‘Thinking 10x’. Under this strategy, the company believes that innovation occurs when something is improved 10 times rather than by 10% (Schmidt and Rosenberg, 2014). This strategy is mainly focused on the engineering department of the company called Google X. A 10x strategy enables the workforce to rethink an idea and pushes the employees to think beyond existing models and re-imagine their approach regarding a project (Robbinson, 2018).
The second strategy is ‘Launch, then Keep Listening’. The strategy is based on the feedback of users. The company typically launches a trial version of their services and products, and later collects feedback from users to make rapid changes and improve the quality of their offerings (Thomas, 2017). The company believes that by this approach, they gain real-world feedback and thus never get far from market needs (Google, 2014). The Android software could be a notable example here, which has improved continuously since its launch in the year 2008. New versions of the Android software are released annually, and improvements are made based on feedback, via online updates to the system. This approach can be compared to a real-world example of the restaurant industry. When a new restaurant opens, they do a ‘soft opening’, in which they consider consumer responses for the improvement of the restaurant (Chasanidou and Karahasanović, 2017).
Another strategy applied by Google is the ‘Share Everything You Can’ strategy. The purpose of applying this strategy is that the company can enable high-level collaboration internally (Schmidt and Rosenberg, 2014). Google regards collaboration as a very important aspect of success; therefore, sharing of information is paramount at the company (Google, 2019). An example of this strategy can be noted of the company’s weekly meeting called TGIF meeting, in which all heads/managers get together either physically in the headquarters or through a live stream to discuss developments of projects, acquisitions, previous activities, and future plans (Lecher, 2019). However, these meetings have recently been conducted monthly, due to incidents related to information leaks; which can be noted as a major downside of this strategy (Elias, 2019).
Like every other company, Google aims to ‘hire the right people’, which is their fourth strategy. The company usually hires people that are referred by the current employees working within Google (Schmidt and Rosenberg, 2014). However, the screening process of Google is likely to differ from other companies. When attractive candidates have been identified, they go through a series of interviews (Wojcicki, 2011). The traits that the company looks for in the employees involve the ability of the candidates to adapt to change and take the risk for big challenges (Google, 2019).
The company applies the ‘70/20/10 strategy’, which states that 70% of activities are dedicated to the core business of the company; 20% of activities are related to the core business; whereas, the remaining 10% of activities are unrelated to the core business (Schmidt and Rosenberg, 2014). Through this strategy, the company intends to explore new markets and opportunities. Google also believes that 10% of the activities unrelated to the core business might actually develop meaningful efforts that can be part of the core business; thus, making the scenario beneficial to the company (Thompson, 2019). This strategy also promotes out of the box thinking and encourages employees to think what-if scenarios regarding a product or service (Steiber, 2019).
Another strategy that Google has applied is ‘looking for ideas everywhere’. An example of this strategy is reflected by Google Maps. For example, in India, the online data related to maps were not accurate, which made users dissatisfied. Therefore, a representative in India suggested an action plan, enabling users to make edits in Google Maps, making the service more convenient, reliable, and useful (Schmidt and Rosenberg, 2014).
Another strategy of Google is using data and not opinions. The company believes that analyzing data is much more meaningful and beneficial than listening to opinions (Savoia and Copeland, 2011). Google believes that analyzing data makes the company more aware of its managerial decisions and enables them to make smarter choices. An example of this strategy is Google Geist. In this regard, a survey was sent to every employee with questions pertaining to management, work-life, and office environment. The data analysts then define the data and pass on the information to the responsible managers who are expected to act appropriately on it (Google, 2019).
The last innovation strategy of Google is focusing on users and not on the competition. The company seeks consumer loyalty through this strategy as it intends to improve the lives of users via innovation (Schmidt and Rosenberg, 2014). An example of this strategy can be noted of their email service. Gmail was launched in 2004 despite the existence of prominent players in the market; however, Google believed the other companies’ services were not up to the mark so they introduced attractive solutions such as big storage for emails, shared folders, calendars, etc. These features, among others helped the company progress to such heights that it is now the most used email service in the world (Steiber, 2019). Therefore, it can be said that their customer-centric strategy of focusing on users to improve their lives gained them a competitive advantage and consumer loyalty.
References
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