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Erschienen in:
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2014 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

3. Google’s Model for Innovation

verfasst von : Annika Steiber

Erschienen in: The Google Model

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

A search on Amazon in October 2013 for the name Google and the word ‘book’ resulted in more than 20,000 hits. So why read this book? The answer is fairly simple. Few books today discuss Google from the perspective of management models and innovation capabilities.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Management Principles for Continuous Innovation
Nächstes Kapitel Managing Continuous Innovation
Fußnoten
1
The method is called affinity technique.
 
2
Girard (2009).
 
3
Steiber and Alänge (2013a).
 
4
Ibid.
 
5
Ibid.
 
6
It was most common at that time for a venture capital company to be either the sole financier or at least the dominant one. Page and Brin wanted to avoid having a dominant partner in their business and therefore insisted on having two equal financiers.
 
7
Schein (1997).
 
8
In 1982, In Search of Excellence was published. This work analyzed more than 40 companies that had been very successful for a very long time. The common denominator was a strong culture. During the latter part of the 1980s, all these successful companies were on the skids, and some questioned whether the conclusion about the strong culture had been wrong.
Naturally, a strong culture focused on stability militates against the kind of changes that require the company culture to change. This is what prevailed until the end of the 1970s when the authors, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, worked with the documentation of this book. In the 1980s, external changes rose to a level that rendered a stable culture a handicap. This is why the successful trends were broken for these formerly successful companies.
Google, too, has a strong culture, but this was developed in order to utilize those opportunities that arise in connection with major external changes. Google’s company culture differs from that of its formerly successful predecessors not by being stable but rather by being dynamic.
 
9
Socialization entails an individual’s growing to be part of society. During this process, values, attitudes, norms, and so on, are absorbed and become part of one’s personality (Egigius 1994).
 
10
The word individuation has several definitions. In this context, individuation means “liberation from dependency on the collective, such as from the liberation from the traditions and customs of society and the development of an individual personality.” (Egigius 1994).
 
11
Independence involves having the ability and willingness to choose opinions and actions and to take responsibility for one’s choices. The definition comes from Wiberg (1999).
 
12
The “classical” motivation theories formulated by Abraham Maslow, Frederick Herzberg Douglas McGregor, and David McClelland and others are still valid, but they are not sufficient for a rapidly changing knowledge-based economy. As early as, Deci (1971) in which he demonstrated that external rewards that were promised before work was performed led to a worse result than if the promise of a future reward was absent. His new findings were rejected by the motivation experts. Everyone “knew,” after all, that a promised bonus leads to better results. Along with Richard Ryan, Deci continued to refine his hypotheses, and today there are more than 1,000 studies that have verified Deci’s (1971) results.
Deci and Ryan (1985). Supported by solid studies, the authors assert that the development of inner motivation (the driving force that Google strives for) is supported by independence, collaboration, and the development of the individual’s own competence. Independence means that the employee should choose what is to be undertaken. Collaboration means that one shares responsibility for the results with colleagues, on an equal footing. Developing competence means that the individual grows more competent and knowledgeable.
 
13
Schein (1997).
 
14
Swedish executives are generally poor at providing feedback. They believe that they devote a good deal of time to this, but in actuality the total time spent on feedback activity comes to only 0–2 %. The situation is the same throughout the Swedish labor market. Simon Elvnäs and a research team at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. Dagens Nyheter, August 18, 2013.
 
15
Schein does not use the term company culture. In his opinion, there are several different organization cultures in every company, and therefore no unified company culture exists. Norms and ways of perceiving reality differ among the various parts of a company because the work performed and other factors are different. This affects the culture.
In this work, the concept of company culture is a designation for the values and norms at Google that are shared by all parts of the company. As part of Google’s company culture, there are many different organization cultures. However, these must have values that accord with the company culture.
 
16
In Senge’s (1990) “a shared vision” is one of the five disciplines that together constitute a learning organization culture. Among authors who write about visions (e.g., Burt Nanu’s Visionary Leadership) the concept of “living vision” appears. A vision is alive when individual employees can use it as a basis for independent decisions in situations that are in some way “new” for them. This may seem contradictory, but if everyone perceives the vision or other shared overarching goals in the same way, this creates the basis for extensive individual independence.
 
17
Many managers have a firm belief in competitions. Employees should be focused on winning. Here, too, Google deviates entirely from the conventional way of thinking. The company believes more in helpfulness, cooperation, collaboration, and a generous approach to colleagues.
 
18
This is one more example of Google’s 180° difference. Common guidelines in other companies include “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and “Don’t change for the sake of change.” At Google, people know that “you can’t step into the same river twice” and that you can’t do the same thing in the same way a second time.
 
19
In 1996, Porter wrote an article titled “What is Strategy?” that attracted a good deal of attention. Porter asserted that much of what is called strategy should be called something else. A strategy must satisfy two requirements: either you should do something different from what the competitors are doing or you should do the same thing as the competitors but in a completely different way. Doing the same thing as the competitors, but better, should not be called strategy. Porter thus rejected many of the successes that formed part of the “Japanese miracle.” Those efforts focused on doing what the competitors were already doing, but doing it better. This is called “me-too.”
Kim and Mauborgne (2005) carried a similar, innovation-oriented message. “Be creative, and develop something of your own, rather than copying competitors and trying to be better than them.” Hamel & Prahalad’s (1990) Competing for the future advocates a similar philosophy.
There was no shortage of advocates for Google’s philosophy before the advent of Google. But few companies have adopted the idea as consistently as Google has.
 
20
Surowiecki (2005) describes a simple idea that has a great deal of importance. Large groups of people are smarter than a limited elite regardless of how brilliant the experts are. Crowds are better than the experts at problem solving, advancing innovations, making decisions, and predicting the future.
Surowiecki describes three types of problems where the wisdom of crowds has proved to be an important asset. These are cognition problems (e.g. answers to questions that don’t have any exact answer but to which certain answers are better than others), coordination problems, and collaboration problems.
The wisdom of crowds requires three conditions: diversity, independence, and a special form of decentralization. According to our interviewees, all these conditions exist in Google’s company culture.
 
21
Utilizing the knowledge about people developed by researchers in psychology, sociology, and education and adapting and refining it for company use should be logical in every company that asserts that “our personnel are our most important resource.” I do not know any company that does this as consistently as Google does.
 
22
The definitions for cooperation and collaboration are from Wiberg (1999).
 
23
When each member of a team assumes independent responsibility for the entire assignment, the responsibility is said to be mutual, and the team is a real team: “a small number of people with complementary skills who are equally committed to a common purpose, goals, and working approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” (Katzenbach and Smith 1993).
 
24
In the Swedish working world, many people perceive the evaluation of employees and colleagues as unpleasant. In many workplaces, there is a culture of silence that is supposedly based on consideration but is actually quite cruel. Employees and managers can be isolated and passed over for promotion because they do not fit in without ever learning how they are lacking. Truth is often unpleasant, but it is never harmful.
 
25
This is according to WPP and Millward Brown, who evaluate the 100 most valuable brands in the world.
 
26
A network for former employees, allowing them to remain connected to Google.
 
27
See earlier note about socialization.
 
28
This function, which in other company is known as Human Resources (HR), is known as People Operations at Google.
 
29
A 360° evaluation incorporates feedback from every direction: from managers, colleagues, and direct reports.
 
30
Style refers to a comprehensive description of the traits that are important to a person’s leadership.
 
31
A selection of books on leadership which is about what managers do and how they should be: Argyris, C. (1976) Increasing Leadership Effectiveness, Wiley; Bennis, W. and Nanus, B. (1985), Bennis (1989): Leaders-The Strategies for taking Charge, Harper & Row; Bennis, W. and Goldsmith, J. (1994), Learning to Lead, Addison Wesley; Bennis, W. and Townsend, R. (1995), Reinventing Leadership - Strategies to Empower the Organization. A bestseller that was the basis for extensive training in much of the world was situational leadership presented by Hersey, K. and Hersey, P. (1996) in Management of Organizational Behavior - Utilizing Human Resources. Prentice Hall. One of his generation's most influential scholars of leadership is Kotter, J. (1986) The General Managers Free Press and The Leadership Factor Free Press, 1988.
 
32
Organizations tend to develop scar tissue from previous mistakes. Someone makes a mistake, and to avoid the repetition of that mistake, a rule or policy is introduced. At Google, steps are taken to avoid this cycle, and once a year the company implements a “bureaucracy bust” to remove bureaucratic measures that are not necessary.
 
33
The older organization theory, based on Fayol, discussed how many subordinates a supervisor could have without losing control. This was called the span of control. This discussion was about the maximum number of subordinates. Google has turned things around and instead discusses the lowest number of employees needed to reduce the risk of micromanagement. Google’s philosophy thus deviates completely from the conventional way of thinking.
 
34
An excellent classic work about how to work with consensus processes is Maiers (1963).
 
35
Brown and Eisenhardt (1997), pp. 1–34.
 
36
Edward Deci wrote an article in 1971 in which he demonstrated that conditional bonuses (if-then) influenced people to perform worse than they did if no bonus were promised. At that time, Deci held a half-time position at a school of economics and another half-time position in the education department of a university. The article resulted in his being discharged from the school of economics. With the help of Richard Ryan, Deci’s first conclusion was verified. Today, more than a thousand reports from various parts of the world that verify that bonuses promised in advance lead to less impressive results. Moderate and unexpected rewards after performance, however, strengthen motivation to continue.
 
37
The definition comes originally from David Garvin in an early Harvard Business Review article that also refers to Chris Argyris’s first description a few years earlier. This definition is taken from the foreword to the Swedish edition by Senge (1995).
 
38
Tom Peters, one of the authors of In Search of Excellence explained at a conference in Stockholm in 1983 that he had examined a rather large number of trailblazing innovations and their origins. None of them had been delivered where expected. At that time, companies were very secretive and guarded their own development projects. No one even dreamed then that meeting and exchanging thoughts with others would contribute to increased creativity.
Xerox’s development center in Palo Alto has not contributed many new things to Xerox. On the other hand, other companies have received a kick start by visiting the center. The most well-known example is Steve Jobs, who founded Apple after a visit to the Xerox development center.
 
39
SVID Stiftelsen Svensk Industridesign. The trichotomy of image, profile, and identity is one accepted way to see a brand as a concept.
 
40
Brown and Eisenhardt (1997), pp. 1–34.
 
41
From Fayol and Taylor at the beginning of the twentieth century until its end, the basis for management and leadership studies was a top-down structure. The executive manages and allocates work and should not have a greater span of control than that in which he (or in rare cases, she) could manage to supervise his employees. Even after motivation theories began to have an effect, the question was “How can a supervisor motivate his employees?” The idea that employees can simply motivate themselves and can also contribute better ideas that their supervisor can if they are given the right circumstances are insights that are so new (about 60 years old) that many companies have still not understood them.
 
42
Symbiosis is defined as a biological interaction in which two organisms live together in a close relationship and from which one or both of them derive a positive effect.
 
Literatur
Argyris, C. (1976). Increasing leadership effectiveness. New York: Wiley.
Bennis, W., & Goldsmith, J. (1994). Learning to lead. Massachusetts: Addison Wesley.
Bennis, W., & Townsend, R. (1995). Reinventing leadership: Strategies to empower the organization. New York: Morrow.
Brown, S. L., & Eisenhardt, K. M. (1997). The art of continuous change: Linking complexity theory & time-paced evolution in relentlessly shifting organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(1), 1–34.CrossRef
Buckingham, M., & Coffman, C. (1999). First break all the rules: What the world’s greatest managers do differently. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Deci, E. L. (1971). Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 18, 105–115.CrossRef
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68–78.
Egigius, H. (1994). Psykologilexikon. Stockholm: Natur & Kultur.
Girard, B. (2009). The Google way: How one company is revolutionizing management as we know it. San Francisco: No Starch Press.
Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K. (1977). Management of organizational behavior: Utilizing human resources. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Katzenbach, J., & Smith, D. (1993). The wisdom of teams creating the high-performance organization. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
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Kotter, J. (1986). The general managers. New York: Free Press.
Kotter, J. (1988). The leadership factor. New York: Free Press.
Maiers, N. R. F. (1963). Problem-solving discussions and conferences. New York: McGraw Hill (Swedish translation, Beckmans).
Porter, M. (1996). What is strategy? Harvard Business Review, 74, 65.
Schein, E. (1997). Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of a learning organization. New York: Doubleday/Currency.
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Surowiecki, J. (2005). The wisdom of crowds. New York: Random House Inc. (the Swedish translation, Massans 1562 vishet, was published by Santérus förlag in Stockholm 2007).
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Metadaten
Titel
Google’s Model for Innovation
verfasst von
Annika Steiber
Copyright-Jahr
2014
Buch
The Google Model

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-04207-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-04208-4

Copyright-Jahr: 2014

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04208-4_3