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03/12/2013 17:12
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Compete, Thrive & Sustain with better business decisions
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Wed 27 Oct 2010
Google & Innovation Culture – Challenges ahead
Posted by anil under Academic, Innovation, MBA, Strategic Management
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As Google gets bigger, it is going to be difficult to manage and keep up the innovation culture as it keeps marching on its path to success. Schmidt once described “small innovative technical teams” as the source of virtually all Google’s strategic initiatives. Google tries to maintain an entrepreneurial culture by forming small teams that act like individual startups. The founders believed that the groups tend to become more traditional as they grow larger. Google has 17,000 employees with about 40% based outside the US. The workforce is multicultural, diverse and spread across the globe. “Continuous Innovation” has been the motto of Google and that has permeated across all divisions at Google. Google has a flat management structure but structured processes, managed bottom-up for innovation, culture of consensus, tolerance for chaos, and committees to approve projects, free food and best perks in the industry. Google has been successful in attracting great talent with “Googley” qualities – self-managed, self-motivated, risk-taking, highly passionate and creative minds with a tenacity to adapt to failures.
I believe that this culture can be sustained but may suffer if the management becomes rigid and prioritizes profits over innovation for the long-term. As evident from the case, Google is able to maintain coordination and teamwork across multiple functional groups – online sales and operations, product management, marketing and engineering divisions. There is no hierarchy, but as the headcount increased
Google started hiring managers at middle level and there was growing fear of more
03/12/2013 17:12
Home
About
Manage Decisions
Compete, Thrive & Sustain with better business decisions
Strategic Management
Archived Posts from this Category
Wed 27 Oct 2010
Google & Innovation Culture – Challenges ahead
Posted by anil under Academic, Innovation, MBA, Strategic Management
No Comments
As Google gets bigger, it is going to be difficult to manage and keep up the innovation culture as it keeps marching on its path to success. Schmidt once described “small innovative technical teams” as the source of virtually all Google’s strategic initiatives. Google tries to maintain an entrepreneurial culture by forming small teams that act like individual startups. The founders believed that the groups tend to become more traditional as they grow larger. Google has 17,000 employees with about 40% based outside the US. The workforce is multicultural, diverse and spread across the globe. “Continuous Innovation” has been the motto of Google and that has permeated across all divisions at Google. Google has a flat management structure but structured processes, managed bottom-up for innovation, culture of consensus, tolerance for chaos, and committees to approve projects, free food and best perks in the industry. Google has been successful in attracting great talent with “Googley” qualities – self-managed, self-motivated, risk-taking, highly passionate and creative minds with a tenacity to adapt to failures.
I believe that this culture can be sustained but may suffer if the management becomes rigid and prioritizes profits over innovation for the long-term. As evident from the case, Google is able to maintain coordination and teamwork across multiple functional groups – online sales and operations, product management, marketing and engineering divisions. There is no hierarchy, but as the headcount increased
Google started hiring managers at middle level and there was growing fear of more