The Eight Pillars of Innovation Susan Wojcicki, Senior Vice President of Advertising, offers a Google-eye view on how to stay creative. WORDS BY Susan Wojcicki ILLUSTRATION BY Robert Samuel Hanson he greatest innovations are the ones we take for granted, like light bulbs, refrigeration and penicillin. But in a world where the miraculous very quickly becomes common-place, how can a company, especially one as big as Google, maintain a spirit of innovation year after year? THINK INNOVATION 33 Nurturing a culture that allows for When we start work in a new area, He began scanning pages, timed how innovation is the key. As we’ve grown to it’s often because we see an important long it took with a metronome, ran over 26,000 employees in more than 60 issue that hasn’t been solved and we’re the numbers and realized it would be offices, we’ve worked hard to maintain confident that technology can make possible to bring the world’s books the unique spirit that characterized a difference. For example, Gmail was online. Today, our Book Search index Google way back when I joined as created to address the need for more contains over 10 million books. employee #16. web email functionality, great search Similarly, AdSense, which delivers At that time I was Head of Marketing and more storage. contextual ads to websites, started (a group of one), and over the past Our mission is one that has the when one engineer put ads in decade I’ve been lucky enough to work potential to touch many lives, and Gmail. We realized that with more on a wide range of products. Some were we make sure that all our employees sophisticated technology we could big wins, others weren’t. Although feel connected to it and empowered to do an even better job by devoting much has changed through the years, I help achieve it. In times of crisis, they additional resources to this tiny believe our commitment to innovation have helped by organizing life-saving project. Today, AdSense ads reach 80 and risk has remained constant. information and making it readily percent of global internet users – it What’s different is that, even as available. The dedicated Googlers is the world’s largest ad network – we dream up what’s next, we face the who launched our Person Finder tool and we have hundreds of thousands of classic innovator’s dilemma: should we (see page 17) within two hours of publishers worldwide. invest in brand new products, or should the earthquake and tsunami in Japan we improve existing ones? We believe in this March are a wonderful recent doing both, and learning while we do it. example of that commitment. Here are eight principles of innovation we’ve picked up along the way to guide us as we go. Strive_for_continual_ Think_big_but_ innovation, not_instant_ start_small perfection Have_a_mission_ No matter how ambitious the plan, you that_matters have to roll up your sleeves and The best part of working on the web? start somewhere. Google Books, We get do-overs. Lots of them. The Work can be more than a job when it which has brought the content of first version of AdWords, released in stands for something you care about. millions of books online, was an 1999, wasn’t very successful – almost Google’s mission is to ‘organize idea that our founder, Larry Page, no one clicked on the ads. Not many the world’s information and make had for a long time. People thought people remember that because we kept it universally accessible and useful.’ it was too crazy even to try, but he iterating and eventually reached the We use this simple statement to guide went ahead and bought a scanner model we have today. And we’re still all of our decisions. and hooked it up in his office. improving it; every year we run tens THINK INNOVATION 34 of thousands of search and ads quality engineer went to the board and wrote outcomes. We try to facilitate this by experiments, and over the past year down the details of a convoluted working in small, crowded teams in we’ve launched over a dozen new problem we had with our ads system. open cube arrangements, rather than formats. Some products we update A group of Googlers lacking exciting individual offices. every day. plans for the evening began re-writing When someone has an idea or needs Our iterative process often teaches the algorithm within hours and had input on a decision, they can just look us invaluable lessons. Watching solved the problem by Tuesday. up and say, ‘Hey…’ to the person sitting users ‘in the wild’ as they use our Some of the best ideas at Google next to them. Maybe that cube-mate products is the best way to find are sparked just like that – when small will have something to contribute as out what works, then we can act on groups of Googlers take a break on a well. The idea for language translation that feedback. It’s much better to random afternoon and start talking in Google Talk (our Gmail chat client) learn these things early and be able about things that excite them. The came out of conversations between the to respond than to go too far down Google Art Project, which brought Google Talk and Google Translate the wrong path. thousands of museum works online, teams when they happened to be Iterating has served us well. We and successful AdWords features like working near one another. weren’t first to Search, but we were Automated Rules, are great examples able to make progress in the market of projects that started out in our by working quickly, learning faster ‘microkitchens.’ This is why we make and taking our next steps based sure Google is stocked with plenty of on data. snacks at all times. Spark_with_imagination, fuel_with_data In our fast-evolving market, it’s hard for people to know, or even imagine, Look_for_ideas_ Share_everything what they want. That’s why we recruit everywhere people who believe the impossible Our employees know pretty much can become a reality. One example As the leader of our Ads products, everything that’s going on and why is Sebastian Thrun who, along with I want to hear ideas from everyone decisions are made. Every quarter, his team, is building technology for – and that includes our partners, we share the entire Board Letter driverless cars to reduce the number advertisers and all of the people on with all 26,000 employees, and we of lives lost to roadside accidents each my team. I also want to be a part present the same slides presented to year. These cars, still in development, of the conversations Googlers are the Board of Directors in a company- have logged 140,000 hands-free miles having in the hallways. wide meeting. driving down San Francisco’s famously Several years ago, we took this quite By sharing everything, you twisty Lombard Street, across literally and posted an ideas board on encourage the discussion, exchange the Golden Gate Bridge and up a wall at Google’s headquarters in and re-interpretation of ideas, which the Pacific Coast Highway without Mountain View. On a Friday night, an can lead to unexpected and innovative a single accident. THINK INNOVATION 35 We try to encourage this type of so strongly in the power of open Quantify: Innovation blue-sky thinking through ‘20 percent technologies. They enable anyone, In a recent six-month period, time’ – a full day a week during which anywhere, to apply their unique skills, half of Google’s core initiatives engineers can work on whatever they perspectives and passions to the started as projects during employees’ 20 percent innovation time.5 want. Looking back at our launch creation of new products and features calendar over a recent six-month period, on top of our platforms. we found that many products started This openness helps to move the your misses. It’s okay to fail as long life in employees’ 20 percent time. needle forward for everyone involved. as you learn from your mistakes and What begins with intuition is fueled Google Earth, for example, allows correct them fast. Trust me, we’ve by insights. If you’re lucky, these developers to build ‘layers’ on top of failed plenty of times. Knowing that it’s reinforce one another. For a while our maps and share them with the okay to fail can free you up to take risks. the number of Google search results world. One user created a layer that And the tech industry is so dynamic displayed on a page was 10 simply uses animations of real-time sensor that the moment you stop taking risks because our founders thought that was data to illustrate what might happen if is the moment you get left behind. the best number. We eventually did a sea levels rose from one to 100 meters. Two of the first projects I worked on at test, asking users, ‘Would you like 10, 20 Another famous example of open Google, AdSense and Google Answers, or 30 search results on one page?’ They technology is our mobile platform, were both uncharted territory for the unanimously said they wanted 30. But Android. There are currently over company. While AdSense grew to be 10 results did far better in actual user 310 devices on the market built on a multi-billion-dollar business, Google tests, because the page loaded faster. It the Android OS, and close to half a Answers (which let users post questions turns out that providing 30 results was million Android developers outside and pay an expert for the answer) was 20 percent slower than providing 10, the company who enjoy the support retired after four years.