Innovation has been extremely important, especially in the world of work. Innovation is exploring new creative ideas and putting them into practice. When a company stops innovating, it is outdone by competitors, so the future of the business depends on this concept.
Let’s take the example of Google. What makes Google a standard of productivity and creativity? In addition to being the most used search engine in the West, it has several other successful products, such as Gmail, Google Drive, Google Translate or Google Maps. The development of these products only shows how the company’s employees are innovative and productive. This is because Google has created an environment conducive to innovation, with 9 fundamental principles of innovation named by Gopi Kallayil, Google’s chief evangelist.
Get to know the 9 principles of innovation, according to Google.
Innovation comes from anywhere
Innovation comes from where it is least expected. For example, a doctor from the Google team suggested that Google should provide help for searches similar to the phrase “how to commit suicide.” Thus, the response from the search engine reveals at the top the free phone number of the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. As a result, the number of calls increased by 9% and the change was adopted in other countries.
Focus on the user
A good example is Instant Search. With this tool, Google has improved the speed of searches thanks to the search suggestions that come up shortly after the user types some letters.
Aim to be ten times better
If we think about improving things by 10%, we will not see results. However, if we think of being ten times better, the change will be radical and we will think outside the box.
For example, in 2004, Google decided to create Boogle Books, with the aim of collecting information from all of the books in history. So, Google has already scanned 30 million of the 130 million books they aimed at. In addition, several libraries around the world are already participating in the project.
Bet on technical insights
Every organization has its vision and betting on it leads to great innovations. For example, it was Google who came up with the idea of cars without drivers.
Ship and iterate
Instead of taking longer until the products reach perfection, the ideal is to launch them to the market as soon as they are functional. This allows users to give opinions and help the company to improve the product.
That happened to Chrome, which was released in 2008. Every 6 weeks, Google released an improved version. Thanks to this, Chrome is, today, the number 1 browser in several countries.
Give employees 20 percent time
The idea of Google is to give employees 20% of their time to work on projects they like, even if they are not part of the company or its main product.
Project managers and engineers can book one day a week to work on their ideas. This may lead to new products or improvements to existing ones.
An example of this principle of innovation: A Google engineer, while planning his trip to Spain, found that he could not open an area in Google Street View because it was too narrow. So he had the idea of putting a camera on a tricycle made to go to narrower places where the Google car could not go.
Default to open processes
Google opens its processes to everyone, that is, leverages the ideas of its users. As? When Google created Android, it encouraged outside developers to develop applications for this system.
Fail well
Innovation is also associated with failure. This is not to say that it is a negative point; quite the opposite! Failing is learning, as well as being an opportunity to improve products and services.
Have a mission that matters
Gopi Kallayil says that “this is the most important principle”. He adds that “everyone at Google has a strong sense of mission and purpose.” By this means the work done by Google will have a positive impact on millions of people.