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For years I have called Google (now Alphabet) "the monster of the web" for their deep and wide influence over the architecture and processes of the Internet -- to say nothing of their massive "Big Brother" data collection, mining, and monetization.
They obviously taught "little brother" Facebook (FB) a thing or three about forging consumer bonds and making money from people's personal data. ("Maybe I shouldn't go Orwell on them," he thought as he typed in a Google doc...)
But one of the most exciting books of 2016 is opening our eyes to the innovation power-house that Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) has become in dozens of other industries you never would have imagined them to be involved in five years ago.
Sprint by Jake Knapp and his team at Google Ventures (now GV) describes a unique 5-day process for quickly solving big problems or incubating new concepts. In the video that accompanies this article I show a screen shot of their simple week-long schedule for rapid innovation.
Knapp became convinced he was on to something at Google at few years back when he met a team of engineers in Sweden to work on a video conferencing idea. He only had three days and wasn't sure what they would accomplish. But they committed to a big goal, and a focused process, and three days later a prototype of Google Hangouts was created.
Skip the Bureaucracy, the Email, and Perfect
Suddenly it was clear to Knapp and other "Googlers" that great things could be accomplished in far less time if they created a structured process that supported rapid innovation. Get rid of big project teams (with big calendars and long planning/development cycles), long meetings, distractions (email is the biggest productivity killer) -- and even the idea that the first iteration has to be very close to the final product -- and what you unleash is powerful creativity, focus, and commitment to extraordinary goals in extremely small windows of time.
The formula is actually pretty simple: small teams -- they found 7 people was ideal -- with a diversity of necessary project skills -- engineers, software developers, designers, marketers, etc -- basically given a big goal and an immovable deadline, something like "Create working prototype of new customer engagement software and test it with consumers on Friday."
Sprint was written with fellow-GVers John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz and Knapp at last count had run more than a hundred "sprints" with their portfolio startups including 23andme, Nest, Foundation Medicine, and Slack, the fastest-growing business app ever. One of their high-profile and early successes was helping Savioke quickly create and test a workable "personality" for Relay, the hotel room service robot -- one that wouldn't "freak out" guests.
Enter IBM Design Thinking Studios
Alphabet is an incredible example of a giant company that knows the key to success lies in still being able to adapt and innovate like a bunch of smaller ones. In the video that accompanies this article, I also talk about their top-secret lab Google X (now, just X) run by Astro Teller, "Captain of Moonshots" and grandson of Edward Teller (yes, father of the hydrogen bomb).
Another giant technology company that wants to remain agile is International Business Machines (IBM - Free Report) . And in 2013 they began investing $100 million in Design Studios where small groups of their engineers and developers could meet with designers to solve unique internal and customer problems quickly, collaboratively, and beautifully.
Big Blue now has 26 of these "labs" around the world, one just a few blocks from my office. (Watson, if you're listening, please reinstate my guest pass... and forgive me for spilling coffee on you.)
The Essence of Great Design
As Stephen Covey taught us so eloquently 27 years ago "Begin With the End In Mind." And that is the crux of "design thinking," which phrase is often credited to Tim Brown of creative consulting firm IDEO. If you can come up with beautiful solutions to complex problems, or simply create a wonderful product or service we didn't even know how badly we needed, then you bless the world and hopefully make some money too.
Some experts in technology wonder whether this is just a passing fad for a behemoth trying hard to reinvent itself as revenues have dropped 25% in the past four years. But I think it's not only vital that IBM pursue this vision in an open-source, shifting-sands world. I think it will work too.
IBM has at least two powerful and proprietary technology platforms that require involved customer education and experimentation: Watson Cognitive Analytics and the Bluemix developer platform. Having IBMers engage in creative, focused, and committed design sprints of their own helps them innovate new and better solutions for their customers with complex technology whose frontiers are just being opened up in Big Data, AI, and cloud capabilities.
Be sure to check out the 15-minute companion video to this article, with insight from tech journalist Liz Stinson at WIRED and all my slides that often tell the story better than my words (almost).
Image: Bigstock
What's a Google SPRINT?
For years I have called Google (now Alphabet) "the monster of the web" for their deep and wide influence over the architecture and processes of the Internet -- to say nothing of their massive "Big Brother" data collection, mining, and monetization.
They obviously taught "little brother" Facebook (FB) a thing or three about forging consumer bonds and making money from people's personal data. ("Maybe I shouldn't go Orwell on them," he thought as he typed in a Google doc...)
But one of the most exciting books of 2016 is opening our eyes to the innovation power-house that Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) has become in dozens of other industries you never would have imagined them to be involved in five years ago.
Sprint by Jake Knapp and his team at Google Ventures (now GV) describes a unique 5-day process for quickly solving big problems or incubating new concepts. In the video that accompanies this article I show a screen shot of their simple week-long schedule for rapid innovation.
Knapp became convinced he was on to something at Google at few years back when he met a team of engineers in Sweden to work on a video conferencing idea. He only had three days and wasn't sure what they would accomplish. But they committed to a big goal, and a focused process, and three days later a prototype of Google Hangouts was created.
Skip the Bureaucracy, the Email, and Perfect
Suddenly it was clear to Knapp and other "Googlers" that great things could be accomplished in far less time if they created a structured process that supported rapid innovation. Get rid of big project teams (with big calendars and long planning/development cycles), long meetings, distractions (email is the biggest productivity killer) -- and even the idea that the first iteration has to be very close to the final product -- and what you unleash is powerful creativity, focus, and commitment to extraordinary goals in extremely small windows of time.
The formula is actually pretty simple: small teams -- they found 7 people was ideal -- with a diversity of necessary project skills -- engineers, software developers, designers, marketers, etc -- basically given a big goal and an immovable deadline, something like "Create working prototype of new customer engagement software and test it with consumers on Friday."
Sprint was written with fellow-GVers John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz and Knapp at last count had run more than a hundred "sprints" with their portfolio startups including 23andme, Nest, Foundation Medicine, and Slack, the fastest-growing business app ever. One of their high-profile and early successes was helping Savioke quickly create and test a workable "personality" for Relay, the hotel room service robot -- one that wouldn't "freak out" guests.
Enter IBM Design Thinking Studios
Alphabet is an incredible example of a giant company that knows the key to success lies in still being able to adapt and innovate like a bunch of smaller ones. In the video that accompanies this article, I also talk about their top-secret lab Google X (now, just X) run by Astro Teller, "Captain of Moonshots" and grandson of Edward Teller (yes, father of the hydrogen bomb).
Another giant technology company that wants to remain agile is International Business Machines (IBM - Free Report) . And in 2013 they began investing $100 million in Design Studios where small groups of their engineers and developers could meet with designers to solve unique internal and customer problems quickly, collaboratively, and beautifully.
Big Blue now has 26 of these "labs" around the world, one just a few blocks from my office. (Watson, if you're listening, please reinstate my guest pass... and forgive me for spilling coffee on you.)
The Essence of Great Design
As Stephen Covey taught us so eloquently 27 years ago "Begin With the End In Mind." And that is the crux of "design thinking," which phrase is often credited to Tim Brown of creative consulting firm IDEO. If you can come up with beautiful solutions to complex problems, or simply create a wonderful product or service we didn't even know how badly we needed, then you bless the world and hopefully make some money too.
Some experts in technology wonder whether this is just a passing fad for a behemoth trying hard to reinvent itself as revenues have dropped 25% in the past four years. But I think it's not only vital that IBM pursue this vision in an open-source, shifting-sands world. I think it will work too.
IBM has at least two powerful and proprietary technology platforms that require involved customer education and experimentation: Watson Cognitive Analytics and the Bluemix developer platform. Having IBMers engage in creative, focused, and committed design sprints of their own helps them innovate new and better solutions for their customers with complex technology whose frontiers are just being opened up in Big Data, AI, and cloud capabilities.
Be sure to check out the 15-minute companion video to this article, with insight from tech journalist Liz Stinson at WIRED and all my slides that often tell the story better than my words (almost).
Kevin Cook is a Senior Stock Strategist with Zacks Investment Research.