Google’s Principles of Innovation: How we create, launch, and iterate

Summary

Join Anna Burge, a subject matter expert from Google, as she unravels the innovation principles that have propelled Google to its zenith. At Google, every individual is encouraged to dream big and create. This innovative spirit is what transformed experimental projects like Gmail and Google Drive into services that billions use today. The company's primary innovation principles include focusing on the user, fostering a culture of innovation, and adopting a 10x mindset. Through empathy-driven design and a data-backed approach, Google ensures its products cater to user needs. Freedom to innovate and a daring 10x thinking transform ideas into scalable, impactful products. The 20% project and specialized programs amplify Google's culture of moonshot thinking, making the company an incubator for revolutionary solutions. Embrace these principles to foster innovation in your own ventures!

Highlights

• Anna Burge shares Google's ethos—create, launch, and iterate as essentials for captivating innovation. 🎉
• Google's improvisational genius turned experimental services Gmail and Google Drive into billion-user platforms. 📬
• Key innovation principle: Start with the user's needs, and all else will naturally align. 🎯
• Foster a limitless environment where innovative solutions flourish unrestricted—Google's second principle. 🔥
• 'Think 10x' not 10%—Google's approach to unveiling radical and substantial improvements. 🌌
• Moonshots happen at Google with encouragement to experiment, fail fast, and learn swiftly! 💭

Key Takeaways

• Innovation is Google's lifeblood, encouraging employees to be creative and dream big at any job level. 🚀
• Google products like Gmail and Drive started as small projects and now serve billions thanks to a nurturing innovative environment. 📈
• Google's first principle: Focus on the user; everything else follows. User empathy drives product design and solutions. 👥
• 'Freedom to innovate' promotes an environment to push boundaries and propose out-of-the-box ideas. 💡
• The '10x thinking' principle encourages radical improvements rather than incremental changes, fostering groundbreaking solutions. 🌑
• Supporting moonshot ideas, Google has platforms like 20% projects and Google X to incubate innovative proposals. 🌟

Overview

Anna Burge dives deep into Google’s winning formula for innovation, sharing how the company maintains a forte by instilling a spirit of creativity and expansive thinking. Starting at grassroot levels, employees are motivated to transform ideas into scalable solutions.

Google's principles of innovation revolve around focusing on the user, encouraging freedom to innovate, and pushing the boundaries through 10x thinking. Anchoring these is a core belief—if you start with understanding user needs, all else will unfold seamlessly—a mantra kept alive through design thinking and technical insights.

Anchoring big ideas into reality, 10x thinking propels the organization to explore beyond conventional boundaries, aided by structures like 20% projects and Google X. For other organizations and innovators, these principles offer a blueprint to enable creative breakthroughs and drive transformative outcomes.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Importance of Innovation at Google In this chapter, Anna Burge, a subject matter expert at Google on business transformation and change management programs, introduces the importance of innovation at Google. She explains that innovation is vital to Google, describing it as the company's lifeblood. Every employee, referred to as a 'Googler,' is encouraged to innovate, be creative, and dream big. The chapter emphasizes the unique environment at Google that genuinely fosters and encourages innovation.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Pet Projects to Public Products The chapter explores how pet projects within companies, like Google, can evolve into public products. It underscores the importance of having sponsorship, creative freedom, and a platform to share innovations. Gmail is presented as a case study, initially starting as an engineer's side project which later became a widely used service upon its official launch.
• 01:30 - 03:30: Focus on the User The chapter titled 'Focus on the User' highlights the importance of prioritizing user needs in product development. It uses Gmail and Google Drive as examples, showcasing their evolution from internal projects to services with over a billion users each. Gmail started as a small, internal email service and became publicly available in April 2004, quickly gaining a massive user base. Similarly, Google Drive, launched in April 2012, transformed from a minor project into a key file storage and management tool, emphasizing user-centric development strategies.
• 03:30 - 05:30: Freedom to Innovate The chapter titled 'Freedom to Innovate' discusses how Google encourages room for innovation, enabling ideas to develop into real products that serve billions of users worldwide. Google boasts seven offerings with over a billion users each. The foundational principle of Google's innovation is focusing on the user, a mantra that resonates with Googlers globally and is deeply ingrained in the company's belief system.
• 05:30 - 08:00: Think 10x - Moonshot Thinking The chapter titled 'Think 10x - Moonshot Thinking' emphasizes the importance of starting with the user to guide successful designs and projects. It highlights the frequent invocation of this principle in meetings and project documents, pointing out its foundation in design thinking, in collaboration with Stanford University. Empathy is underscored as the critical starting point in the design process. An example provided is Google's search engine, which was developed with the principle of organizing information around user needs, serving as the basis for Google's business model.
• 08:00 - 10:00: Encouragement and Support for 10x Ideas This chapter discusses Google's aim to organize the world's information, ensuring it is both accessible and useful to everyone. Initially, Google's approach was straightforward: users would enter a name or a query into their search bar, which would then generate relevant results. However, Google later confronted more complex challenges, such as handling misspelled names, unclear questions, or inputs that were originally in a different language and subsequently translated. This shift illustrates the company's commitment to innovation and the importance of encouraging bold, '10x' ideas to enhance their services.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Conclusion and Inspiration The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Inspiration' discusses how Google's search team expanded their scope by exploring solutions such as predictive text and utilizing popular searches. These innovations contributed to increased flexibility and accuracy in user searches, helping to prevent potential errors that could deviate the search process. The chapter highlights Google's commitment to being data-driven in their internal decision-making processes.

Google’s Principles of Innovation: How we create, launch, and iterate Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hi I'm Anna Burge and I'm a subject matter expert here at Google on business transformation and change management programs I'm thrilled to get the chance to unpack some of Google's innovation principles here for you today at Google innovation is our lifeblood every Googler is encouraged to innovate to be creative and to dream big and it's this secret sauce that Google has to foster such an environment that truly and honestly encourages people to be
• 00:30 - 01:00 innovators while in their day jobs let me set the scene with a short story Google has many products that were originally developed as pet projects with a little sponsorship some breathing room to be creative and a platform to share the results these ideas came to life as real products for example Gmail started as a single engineers pet project by the time it launched as a
• 01:00 - 01:30 public beta in April 2004 almost everyone at Google was using Gmail for their email Gmail now serves more than a billion monthly users isn't that remarkable a similar story can be told for Google Drive started as a small project drive was introduced to the public April 2012 and now also serves more than a billion
• 01:30 - 02:00 users giving Googlers room to innovate has turned ideas into real products that are now serving billions of users today we have 7 offerings at Google that have more than a billion users first up in our innovation principles is the bedrock of everything we do at Google focus on the user this phrase has become such an anthem for Googlers all around the world because the business firmly believes
• 02:00 - 02:30 that if you start with your user all else will follow these words are said in many meetings and in many project documents on a regular basis rooted and built from the design thinking methodology in partnership with Stanford University empathy for the user is the perfect starting point for any design process for example take search the basis for Google's original business organizing
• 02:30 - 03:00 the world's information so that it's accessible and useful for all initially Google wanted users to type in a name or a need in the search bar and results would then populate that makes sense and is a straightforward problem to solve but then Google realized what if the name was misspelled or the question wasn't clear or was written in another language initially and then translated
• 03:00 - 03:30 this is when the search teams scope truly expanded Google started to explore solutions like predictive text or searches that other people had made before the emergence of these solutions allowed for more volatility and how users searched and accounted for potential mishaps that would steer the search off course Google aims to be data-driven about our internal decision making at all times this idea to focus
• 03:30 - 04:00 on the user has bred a sub principle to bet on technical insights to solve problems put into practice this means allowing solutions to be tested and using technical insights gathered along the way to iterate on solutions to solve problems freedom to innovate principle is number two and that is the idea of creating an environment that fosters a
• 04:00 - 04:30 culture of innovation Google believes that the best way to innovate is to push the boundaries of what's possible with our existing and developing projects as an example let's look at how Google has taken search from reactive to suggestive for the users having Googlers really drive out of box thinking and to challenge the impossible asking ourselves questions like could we allow users to see a restaurants ratings menu opening and
• 04:30 - 05:00 closing times all in one windowpane what would Google then need to do to make this happen well perhaps cut advertising space on the page to make more space for information perhaps reorder the way the text and pictures appear on the page perhaps baked in the up-to-date timing for the user based on their location settings the possibilities to be
• 05:00 - 05:30 suggestive were and are endless this is why Google search pages are constantly being changed tweaked and updated and while it might seem crazy allowing for constant change is how Google follows our second freedom to innovate principle finally the third principle is to think 10x sometimes called a moonshot thinking 10x and not just 10% is all about coming
• 05:30 - 06:00 up with radical solutions to huge problems these solutions provide 10 times improvement to the way things are currently done and not just a 10% incremental fix a great example of this in history is Henry Ford's quote if you had asked the people what they wanted they would have said faster horses that's 10% better instead a small
• 06:00 - 06:30 incremental change ford focused on radical ideas that produce radical change that's 10x thinking Google encourages its employees to make long-term bets in order to find opportunities to really expand projects and to explore ideas that are big and scary and take time to really unpack what is most unique about Google moonshot is thinking and focusing on
• 06:30 - 07:00 rapid experimentation we want our employees to feel comfortable to fail fast and to learn and to try again many outsiders to Google asked questions like how many failures is enough and when is a project at a point where it is a moonshot and the reality is there is no single answer to define success in these terms Google has created outlets for employees
• 07:00 - 07:30 to seek advice and support for their 10x thinking through programs such as 20% projects for instance the first thing you do when you have a moonshot idea is to find five people in the business to support your idea once you have their backing you can use that as the basis of your project proposal you have several options for your idea 20% projects second means rotations and even more
• 07:30 - 08:00 substantial testing programs like Google Ventures and Google X now that's a pretty great way to encourage your employees to look at the art of impossible and really stretch themselves to innovate I hope you enjoyed hearing about Google's innovation principles perhaps we've lit the fire under you to focus on the user create an environment where everyone has freedom to innovate and to go out there and create your own moonshots good luck