An article in Business Week gives us some insight into GOOGLE's New Product Development process.
The article "Inside GOOGLE's New Product Process" talks a bit about strategy as well as some ideas about what might be next.
What do you think?
Are they effective at developing new products? What makes it effective, or not?
What are the Lessons Learned?
Gene A. Wright
Monday, October 16, 2006
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4 comments:
It seems as if Google is just throwing new products out there in a half hearted sort of way just to see which ones take hold. According to the article, not many of their new products are catching on. Perhaps Google is bored with being known as the number one search engine which is a core compentency. But the competition is heating up and Google may see the need to stay in the spotlight to remind everyone they are an aggressive and innovative company. Keeping the Google name out there on an almost daily basis (new product and collaboration announcements) hasn't hurt their stock any which was up today at over $450/share. Something must be working and this may very well be their strategy (afterall, it is about the return to the investors/shareholders). However, will this strategy backfire? Will consumers and industry leaders become bored with Google's new product process where nothing seems to gel...like the boy that cried wolf. Maybe.
I think Google's strategy to flood the market with products is a good idea. They may putting alot more out there than is actually catching on, but it is something they can afford to do because they have the ultimate testing group (one of the most popular internet sites on the planet). Also, people may be realizing that Google is doing this, and they may start visiting the site even more just to see what they come up with next. Let's face it, even though some of the ideas may not be great, curiosity will still attract people to check them out.
Great article on Google's new product creation philosophy of trying a bunch of products, refining them, and seeing what survives.
Some might call these new product processes failures. I call it 'learning'. They have the money. They want to expand. But instead of pouring billions into an area they know nothing about, they spend a fraction of that on some experimental probes into a lot of different areas. Someone might discover something interesting. Another might find something that is useless by itself, but when combined with other information they've just found becomes much more viable.
They're evolving at the edges and growing into new niches, slowly at first. It's even possible that they might find something more profitable than search, and the Google of the future might have different connotations for the average individual. If nothing else, they're not betting the farm on one cash cow.
If the bottom falls out of search, they have GMail. If webmail services fall into disrepute, they have Google Earth. If that dies, I'm betting they'll have something else by then.
-Sameer Mustafa
I think Google has a good strategy putting all their new products out there and develop the ones that are picking up. Doing this Google saves time and cost. I also think Google is using this strategy to see what their customer’s expectation of the products are.
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