How Google is boosting its innovation efforts

Internet giant Google is improving its innovation process to ensure its top management hear about the best ideas much faster than before.

The company, which famously allows its employs to spend one workday per week exploring projects unrelated to their job profiles, has set up a structure by which its engineers will now report ideas through division management channels, while chief executive Eric Schmidt will hear the best ideas at internal ‘innovation reviews’.

The meetings “force management to focus” on ideas that could be developed further, Schmidt told The Wall Street Journal. “We were concerned that some of the biggest ideas were getting squashed,” he said.

The move may be an attempt to make the most out of revenue-generating ideas, as it has seen its turnover fall from 56% growth in 2007 to 31% growth in 2008.

Additionally, Google may be attempting to counter a recent wave of employees who are leaving management positions; some of whom may have been developing promising products in their own time.

Some of Google’s major products have been produced during employees’ private research time, including a new e-mail portal called Google Wave, which was developed in the Google Australia office.

Brendan Lewis, SmartCompany blogger and innovation expert, says that Google’s move is a good one, and that “creativity is something that can be industrialised”.

“Getting people to knuckle down and do work is difficult. Part of that program, that wasn’t about innovation, was about getting the brightest people where there was public good as well. To get a fantastic person, get them for three-and-a-half days a week, rather than not at all, by allowing them to work on major projects.”

“Certainly a recession makes people think, ‘If I’m not making money, what is going on,’ and there’s more drive to be accountable. You need to be innovative, but you need to be more accountable in that innovation.”

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