They studied the success of OSRD during WW2 and came up with some principles. To put them simply they were:
1. Innovation occurs only in small group of people (15-30), any larger number and the innovative ability of the group decreases.
2. Innovation requires a diverse group of individuals. They don't mean diverse in the modern blacks, latino, female sense. They meant diverse as in a missile development team should have a shop floor mechanic, theoretical physicist, aerodynamics expert etc, as many viewpoints relevant to the problem as possible.
3. Innovation requires a flat hierarchy, anyone should feel free to share their ideas to the boss and the boss should be capable of finding which of them are worth pursuing
4. Innovative organisations require rapid prototyping and external contracting. Anything unrelated to the problem they want to solve should be sent to outside contractors to solve so that they don't waste time in it, and rapid continuous prototyping is better than time spent excessive planning on the drawing board.
5. Innovative organisations require a large risk tolerance. They shouldn't forever be in need of money, ideally they should have enough money to fail a couple of times without worrying about closing down.
Apart from this I would say expecting Google as the large organisation being innovative is unrealistic, but small groups within google are quite innovative. Google is no bell labs but Google has invented Tensorflow, Waymo, Alpha-Zero and maybe something in Quantum Computing in recent history so it's no slouch either. I also suspect having a good 'taste' in choosing problems is important. Regardless of how amazing your group, if you end up choosing an incremental problem or too outlandish a problem, both will end up as a waste of time.
Thanks !! I'll check that out. Meanwhile were those criteria meant as necessary or sufficient?
The problem selection you mention is critical. Incrementalism is well documented, but outlandish dreams are an issue too. Balloon internet comes to mind. I love that it was tried, but not that it was a boondoggle.
I think also to your point on Tensorflow et al, it feels as if large orgs can still have highly innovative sub-units in the technology side, even if that's not evident at the product side (bringing it to users).
I think necessary, there was a lot of focus on finding good leaders which might make it sufficient. They do an analysis on classifying companies that gives good insight into Google. According to them there are 4 types of companies:
Type 1- Innovative companies that we want
Type 2- Copy Mentality. These are companies that lost faith in their innovation and basically copy competitors (with some optimisations)/ acquire them to maintain dominance. Google copied a lot (Google docs, gmail, chrome etc) and also acquired quite a bit (Deepmind, Brain). Facebook has acquired all its new products (Insta, WhatsApp, Oculus etc), I think most tech companies can be Classified Type 2
Type 3- accounting mentality. They are no longer confident in acquiring or copying competitors so they just fix their accounts to maintain profitability. These companies downsize, outsource, cut corners etc, anything to maintain profits. Intel is a good example, they are even downsizing their headquarters now and no innovation since 20 yrs.
Type 4- Power mentality. They capture organs of the state to survive like Boeing.
The interesting conclusion they come to that speaks to your last point is that Type 1 companies tend to be bad at bringing the product to users, Type 2 are ideal for that job. As an example best known Type 1 company Bell Labs rarely managed to monetise their inventions. However with Tesla and Space X which are Type 1 and user focused so I don’t know how valid this is. Their policy prescriptions is use govt to stimulate more type 1 companies, leave type 2 and type 3 alone, crush type 4. Type 3 would normally die if they couldn’t become type 4 or had a leadership change to become type 2.
With regards to Type 1 they give the general characteristics which I described in my previous comment but seem to tend to the conclusion that a good leader is the most vital component and all the rules can be broken by a good leader so don’t take anything hard and fast.
That's an interesting taxonomy, and the focus on productisation vs pure innovation is an important one, also the fact that we need different types of organisations to do both!
There has been some research on what makes organisations innovative from post WW2 defence departments like this book: https://www.amazon.com/Sidewinder-Creative-Missile-Development-China/dp/1591149819
They studied the success of OSRD during WW2 and came up with some principles. To put them simply they were:
1. Innovation occurs only in small group of people (15-30), any larger number and the innovative ability of the group decreases.
2. Innovation requires a diverse group of individuals. They don't mean diverse in the modern blacks, latino, female sense. They meant diverse as in a missile development team should have a shop floor mechanic, theoretical physicist, aerodynamics expert etc, as many viewpoints relevant to the problem as possible.
3. Innovation requires a flat hierarchy, anyone should feel free to share their ideas to the boss and the boss should be capable of finding which of them are worth pursuing
4. Innovative organisations require rapid prototyping and external contracting. Anything unrelated to the problem they want to solve should be sent to outside contractors to solve so that they don't waste time in it, and rapid continuous prototyping is better than time spent excessive planning on the drawing board.
5. Innovative organisations require a large risk tolerance. They shouldn't forever be in need of money, ideally they should have enough money to fail a couple of times without worrying about closing down.
Apart from this I would say expecting Google as the large organisation being innovative is unrealistic, but small groups within google are quite innovative. Google is no bell labs but Google has invented Tensorflow, Waymo, Alpha-Zero and maybe something in Quantum Computing in recent history so it's no slouch either. I also suspect having a good 'taste' in choosing problems is important. Regardless of how amazing your group, if you end up choosing an incremental problem or too outlandish a problem, both will end up as a waste of time.
Thanks !! I'll check that out. Meanwhile were those criteria meant as necessary or sufficient?
The problem selection you mention is critical. Incrementalism is well documented, but outlandish dreams are an issue too. Balloon internet comes to mind. I love that it was tried, but not that it was a boondoggle.
I think also to your point on Tensorflow et al, it feels as if large orgs can still have highly innovative sub-units in the technology side, even if that's not evident at the product side (bringing it to users).
I think necessary, there was a lot of focus on finding good leaders which might make it sufficient. They do an analysis on classifying companies that gives good insight into Google. According to them there are 4 types of companies:
Type 1- Innovative companies that we want
Type 2- Copy Mentality. These are companies that lost faith in their innovation and basically copy competitors (with some optimisations)/ acquire them to maintain dominance. Google copied a lot (Google docs, gmail, chrome etc) and also acquired quite a bit (Deepmind, Brain). Facebook has acquired all its new products (Insta, WhatsApp, Oculus etc), I think most tech companies can be Classified Type 2
Type 3- accounting mentality. They are no longer confident in acquiring or copying competitors so they just fix their accounts to maintain profitability. These companies downsize, outsource, cut corners etc, anything to maintain profits. Intel is a good example, they are even downsizing their headquarters now and no innovation since 20 yrs.
Type 4- Power mentality. They capture organs of the state to survive like Boeing.
The interesting conclusion they come to that speaks to your last point is that Type 1 companies tend to be bad at bringing the product to users, Type 2 are ideal for that job. As an example best known Type 1 company Bell Labs rarely managed to monetise their inventions. However with Tesla and Space X which are Type 1 and user focused so I don’t know how valid this is. Their policy prescriptions is use govt to stimulate more type 1 companies, leave type 2 and type 3 alone, crush type 4. Type 3 would normally die if they couldn’t become type 4 or had a leadership change to become type 2.
With regards to Type 1 they give the general characteristics which I described in my previous comment but seem to tend to the conclusion that a good leader is the most vital component and all the rules can be broken by a good leader so don’t take anything hard and fast.
That's an interesting taxonomy, and the focus on productisation vs pure innovation is an important one, also the fact that we need different types of organisations to do both!