Abstract

Google, Inc. made innovation an everyday process rather than using it as a strategy during times of crisis. While some companies worked on perfecting their product before its initial release, Google followed a unique ‘launch and iterate’ process to innovation. Right from the time the company was founded, Google relied on its employees to augment its culture of innovation. Its policies like the ‘70/20/10’ innovation model and ‘Innovation Time Off’ gave a lot of freedom to Google’s employees to work on their preferred projects. Google also made it easy for its employees to express themselves through several channels including TGIF, Googlegeist, and Google Moderator. To foster radical innovation, the company set up the Google X division, where the employees were pushed to come up with ‘moon shots’ — projects that created products and services that were 10 times better than the competition. Co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, and other members of the top management team took a personal interest in these projects. However, the management team had to contend with various challenges as some of the ‘moon shot’ projects such as Google Glass, Google Driveless car project, and Project Loon faced questions with regard to their commercial viability. Moreover, as Google grew to huge proportions in terms of product-market diversity as well as employee strength, the challenge before the triumvirate of Page, Brin, and Schmidt, was how to keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive in the company.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the concept of corporate entrepreneurship as also which model of corporate entrepreneurship is followed by Google.
• Study the various initiatives followed by Google that enables it to keeps the innovation spirit alive in a company with an employee strength of more than 44,000.
• Appreciate the importance of innovation in fostering growth and achieving superior results.
• Discuss the challenges that Google will face on the innovation front in the future.

Keywords

Corporate Entrepreneurship, Models of Corporate Entrepreneurship, Sustaining Corporate Entrepreneurship, Innovation strategy, Innovation management, Organizational culture, Innovation culture, ‘Launch and iterate’ process, Innovation as a Strategy, Resource-based View of the Firm, Strategic Capabilities, Enabling and Managing Change, ‘70/20/10’ innovation model, ‘Innovation Time Off’, Google, Google X