"Reaction [beta]"
Nine Notions 3 Jul 2006
As Google's vice-president for search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer is the last stop before founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin on the way to final approval of any new feature that appears on "the Web's most valuable real estate". A recent article in Business Week expounds her Nine Notions of Innovation. While we're not quite as big as Google (yet!), Marissa's notions sum up our own philosophy. Here they are in full:
- Ideas come from everywhere
- Google expects everyone to innovate, even the finance team.
- Share everything you can
- Every idea, every project, every deadline - it's all accessible to everyone on the intranet.
- You're brilliant, we're hiring
- Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favor intelligence over experience.
- A license to pursue dreams
- Employees get a "free" day a week. Half of new launches come from this "20% time".
- Innovation, not instant perfection
- Google launches early and often in small beta tests, before releasing new features widely.
- Don't politic, use data
- Mayer discourages the use of "I like" in meetings, pushing staffers to use metrics.
- Creativity loves restraint
- Give people a vision, rules about how to get there, and deadlines.
- Worry about usage and users, not money
- Provide something simple to use and easy to love. The money will follow.
- Don't kill projects - morph them
- There's always a kernel of something good that can be salvaged.
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1 comment so far
James Downes 3 Jul 2006 02:53 PM
Notion 7 (Creativity loves restraint) is one of my favourites. A previous Marissa Mayer article illustrates this notion perfectly.
I often hear people bemoaning the various constraints that their clients put upon them. I find that along with being upfront with your clients about these issues, constraints can be a Project Manager's / Designer's / Developer's friend. You can't stop constraints in the real world; embrace them and you can learn to love them.