Innovation. Shannon Maher ICT Spring, June 19, 2013

Transcription

1 Innovation Shannon Maher ICT Spring, June 19, 2013

2 Innovation at corporate scale Shannon Maher ICT Spring Europe, June 19, 2013

3 Only companies in Fast Company s Top 50 Most Innovative list first 5 years

4 Corporate Level Innovators Common Features Large, inspiring mission w/breadth of products, projects Well-defined corporate culture Tend to be people-centric Strong leadership and vision (typically founder)

5 Corporate Optimizations To be effective, all aspects of the company must be evaluated and optimized for innovation. These optimizations can be roughly categorized as o People o Management structure o Processes/Priorities/Policies o Products/Projects

6 I was asked to talk about Google and innovation, so this will not be an unbiased look across companies. Most of my comments will be about Google, sprinkled with references from time I spent at other companies (AOL, Halliburton, several startups). This is not an unbiased presentation. I no longer work at Google, but continue to believe it is an exceptional place.

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8 Innovation starts with people Google is focused on identifying, attracting, retaining, and motivating talented, creative people o spent a lot of time, energy and money on these issues. o Has optimized HR around these issues o Results are externally validated results: Google has been #1 on Fortune s Best Company to work for (last 4 years), #1 Intern program (Glassdoor), #1 Most Desired Employer (LinkedIn) Other companies say that people are their most important asset - but after making that statement, its business as usual

9 Culture and Perks Google Corporate Culture Open, collaborative and communicative Consensus decision making driven by priorities set from above Perks Won t list them they are well documented Many perks are intended to stimulate info-sharing, relationships, shared mission, Others appear to be for convenience, but also allow people to remain focused on work. All are useful fighting the talent wars and differentiating Google from other employers.

10 Interviewing/hiring Google interviews are reasonably well documented o I apologize if you have been stuck in a large number of interviews o Fewer interviews in the last 2-3 years Problem: A people tend to hire B people, B people hire C level, etc. Google s hiring process is an attempt to take the subjective evaluation process and make it a scalable, repeatable, objective, calibrated, uniform world-wide process o Several (many?) interviews o No hiring manager feedback goes to hiring committees o Scored, and reviewed at exec (SVP) level o If needed, additional interviews repeat evaluation

11 real projects, with real responsibility (and real salaries) Similar interview process to perms; modified hiring process to convert to FT #1 internship program in US last 2 years (Glassdoor) Bring in LOTS of great talent with lots of energy. Many of the best convert to fulltime, with great results

12 Management Company is very engineering-driven Organizationally, is exceptionally flat o De-emphasizing command and control; Trust but verify Fundamentally bottoms-up decision making Projects don t use project managers o With strong Product Management and Eng leads, Proj. Mgr is redundant o Greatly simplifies decision making Research groups embedded in projects No continuing engineering teams. All engineers are developing products.

13 Processes/Priorities/Policies Projects have great latitude in tools used right tool for the job Speed to launch is a critical metric, and used for team member evaluation. o Emphasize launch and iterate, user feedback to evaluate features Movement of staff between projects encouraged/ required Googlegeist and Bureaucracy Busters 20% time, 70/20/10

14 Broad range of Ambitious Products

15 Products Even More Chrome Books Voice Latitude Scholar, Blog Search, Patent Search Alerts and Trends B to B Ads: Search and Display Offers, Shopping Analytics Fiber Google X Glass Chauffeur Loon (

16 Infrastructure Projects

17 Challenges Direct cost o Some people see a great retention tool, I see a high gross margin product Eric Schmidt, commenting on the new café in London Performance management o Higher risk in larger, more innovative projects means more failures, possibly more expensive failures o How to reward for success while not demotivating upon failure? Try to create metrics that are somewhat invariant to project success. Collaborative decision making getting closure Personnel management due to flat management structure o Google moving towards large company norms as it matures

18 Q+A Thank You!

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20 Google Founder s LeFer Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one. Throughout Google's evolution as a privately held company, we have managed Google differently. We have also emphasized an atmosphere of creativity and challenge, which has helped us provide unbiased, accurate and free access to information for those who rely on us around the world. As a private company, we have concentrated on the long term, and this has served us well. As a public company, we will do the same. Our employees, who have named themselves Googlers, are everything. Google is organized around the ability to attract and leverage the talent of exceptional technologists and business people. We have been lucky to recruit many creative, principled and hard working stars. We hope to recruit many more in the future. We will reward and treat them well.