Innovation Deficit Disorder
Eric Schmidt of Google fame writes that the model for innovation in America has to change from a top down trickle method to a bottom up via the availability of information online. This sounds about right to me and we better get working fast to cultivate and nurture our entrepreneur spirit in this country.
Eric Schmidt — Washington Post — February 2010
Google CEO Eric Schmidt to newspapers: Innovate Your Way Out
More than ever, innovation is disruptive and messy. It can’t be controlled or predicted. The only way to ensure it can flourish is to create the best possible environment — and then get out of the way. It’s a question of learning to live with a mess.
First, start-ups and smaller businesses must be able to compete on equal terms with their larger rivals. They don’t need favors, just a level playing field. Congress should ensure that every bill it passes promotes competition over protecting the interests of incumbents.
LA TImes - April 2009 - – David Sarno
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt delivered today’s closing keynote at the Newspaper Assn. of America annual conference in San Diego, conjuring up visions of an open, interactive future to the audience of newspeople.
In order to move themselves forward, he said, newspapers will have to get used to the idea that they are not just generators of trusted, professional content, but also aggregators of the new kinds of information the Web has enabled — the collectively edited knowledge structures like Wikipedia, and user-generated information like blogs, images and online video.
“In that model, newspapers become platforms for the technology to use their services,” Schmidt said, “to build businesses on top of them, and also to interlink — hyperlink — all of the different information sources that end-users will take.”
Perhaps not surprisingly for the leader of one of the most inventive technology companies of the 21st century, Schmidt’s prescription for newspapers — an industry that has struggled to escape a dying, century-old business model — is innovation.
“Innovation is bizarre because it’s very difficult to centrally plan,” he said. “But you can architect a structure where innovation is welcome, and where it’s taken advantage of.”
Among his recommendations were …
… taking advantage of mobile technology as a distribution mechanism, beginning to think of stories not as happening on a given day, but as continuous and “living,” and, of course, improving the experience of reading online.
“We need to reinvent the way the Web delivers this content,” he said, “so that you can have the kind of experience, when people are wandering around with their phone and so forth, that you can have with a printed magazine.
“From my perspective, the online experience can be thought of as terrible compared to what I view as this wonderful experience with magazines and newspapers.”
The day after the Associated Press announced its intentions to more aggressively control the dissemination of proprietary news content, Schmidt noted that the natural laws that govern digital information flows make that kind of control difficult.
“One of the fundamental problems with the Internet is that it doesn’t respect traditional scarcity structures. It’s very hard to hold information back.” In order to create value from content that can be difficult to control, he said, “We think the answer is advertising.”
On the recent fuss over Google’s relationship with the AP specifically, Schmidt said that because his company pays the news collective through a multimillion-dollar hosting and distribution deal, “I was a little confused by all the excitement in the news in the last 24 hours. I’m not quite sure what they were referring to.”
“There’s always a tension around fair use,” he said a moment later, referring to the legal concept that allows for limited reuse of proprietary content — as Google News does by aggregating headlines. “Ultimately fair use is a balance of interests in favor of the consumer.”
“Think in terms of what your reader wants. These are ultimately consumer businesses. If you piss off enough of them you will not have any more, or if make them happy, you will grow them quickly.”
McKinsey Quarterly — SEPTEMBER 2008 — James Manyika
Google’s view on the future of business: An interview with CEO Eric Schmidt
How the Internet will change the nature of competition, innovation, and company operations.
In his years at the company, Schmidt has delivered steady growth while expanding Google’s reach. By anticipating the ways in which people would expand their use of Internet applications, Schmidt has introduced new products from the popular Web-based e-mail service Gmail (Google Mail in Germany and the UK) to the recently unveiled G1 mobile phone. And as Google’s audience and influence have increased, so too has its appeal among advertisers worldwide.
Making all this happen depends on Google’s ability to attract and engage top talent. The organization that Schmidt has helped shape depends on collaborative projects and free flows of information that encourage employees to share ideas. Staffers devote 20 percent of their work time to special projects of their own design, an inventive and effective policy that is at the core of its innovation efforts.
Not many executives have a better vantage point on the changing technological landscape than Schmidt. He recently took time out to discuss his views with McKinsey director James Manyika. Schmidt sees more powerful digital assistants arising from cloud computing, markets morphing at an ever faster pace, and plenty of space for human creativity if organizations are willing to carve out a place for it.
StellaPop Says: Innovation is the only way and creativity is the muscle that built this country and many great companies. And don’t forget the hard work which is a given for greatness.
