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Can Google’s winning ways be applied to all kinds of businesses? The authors of “How Google Works,” ( http://www.howgoogleworks.net/ ) Eric Schmidt, Google’s former chief executive, and Jonathan Rosenberg, a former senior product manager at Google, firmly believe that they can.
The critical ingredient, they argue in their new book, is to build teams, companies and corporate cultures around people they call “smart creatives.” These are digital-age descendants of yesterday’s “knowledge workers,” a term coined in 1959 by Peter Drucker, the famed management theorist.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/the-google-formula-for-success/
Do people of SN agree that such success can be replicated in diverse environments, diverse cultures? Or, is Google's success one of a kind?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by dublet on Monday September 29 2014, @02:07PM
No.
Not even Google can replicate it's formula of success. See Google Wave, Google Plus, etc..
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Monday September 29 2014, @02:46PM
... and Android, and Calendar, and Mail, and Chrome, and ...
Not every product succeeds. Some of these leveraged the success of Google search (brand trust, etc), but most are full-fledged top-notch products that are successful and widely adopted. I assumed you meant products other than Google Search?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dublet on Monday September 29 2014, @03:27PM
My wider point is that there is no magic "Google" fomula for success. If they had it, all of their products would succeed. They just try things and keep working on it until it's either a success or cut their losses.
You are right about leveraging the brand but there is also some luck/timing factor involved. I doubt Android would've been as big of a success if Nokia hadn't abandoned Meamo [wikipedia.org] in favour of the abortion that is Windows Phone. Anyway, that's a bit of crystal ball gazing. Another point with Android is that the only real other alternative is Apple's iPhone (Blackberry are dead in the water, Windows Phone is not worth considering) these days. I wonder how many people would gladly swap their Android phone for something better. I know I would. I still wish that WebOS succeeded but then again, I rather liked BeOS too. Perhaps me liking something is a kiss of death.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday September 29 2014, @03:44PM
The point I get from it is that a product or service will be well and quickly designed/developed/implemented using their formula. You can design the best product in the world and have it beaten my something inferior because as you say, the timing is wrong, it's ahead of its time, it's badly marketed, etc.
With Android, the other current platforms are all reasonable choices (for most, not me), I think Android is just better. I'd probably prefer Maemo as well, but it's not really an option at this point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 30 2014, @12:43PM
Their model depends heavily on having a stable cash cow (in this case, search advertising) to subsidize all of this experimentation.
Makes it somewhat hard to bootstrap.
It's also hard to prove that the model is really better than an alternative.
Have they created successful products? Sure. Did they create more than they would have if they used a different methodology? Maybe.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday September 29 2014, @05:44PM
Besides, if altavista and yahoo did not essentially stop, google might have a much rougher ride.
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