Google Fails Fast, Often: That's a Good Thing

It might be going too far to say that Google "celebrates" failure. But Google's "beta" culture can be seen as a good thing. The Next Web took a look at 251 Google products released since 1998 and found that 90, or 36 percent, had been cancelled.

TNW notes that there were among these products eight "major flops" and "14 major successes." It is hard to say that what Google learned from the failures lead to the 14 successes.

Google fails 36% of the time

Why it is So Hard to Innovate Like Apple

Those of you who work inside larger enterprises will appreciate the sentiment that virtually no companies innovate the way Apple does. And even Apple might regress towards the mean in five years or so.

"While driving our new Acura RDX the other day (and trying to find something via the navigation system), my partner and I both looked at each other and said, "When will Apple make a car? They'd get it right," says Jack Aaronson, The Aaronson Group CEO.

"We say the same thing about cable TV interfaces, wishing that Apple TV would finally become a higher priority for Apple. We say the same thing looking at the new slew of Android phones, and are frustrated that Google has chosen to emulate Microsoft's way of designing software instead of Apple's," he says.

Most of you who work in larger enterprises will appreciate the many subtle, and not so subtle ways business-relevant innovation can be stifled. Those of you who work at small organizations will face equally-substantial obstacles, but for different reasons. Bigger organizations have the resources to innovate in relevant ways, but typically have human obstacles to doing so. Smaller organizations often have the will, but not the resources.

If innovation were really easy, more firms would be clearly recognized as outstanding in that regard. Innovation, no less than anything else in the real world, appears to be a "Bell Curve."

Innovate or Get Out of the Way

10 'Innovation Principles' for success in a disrupted telco marketplace

Taking care of a firm's biggest-spending, most-profitable customers is a rational strategy for virtually any company in any industry, and the telecom business is no exception.

But there's a downside to success. When a business model works well, there is resistance to change, and sometimes change is needed.

Analysts at Telco 2.0 point out that one way to jumpstart innovation is to focus on "unattractive" customers. By that they mean a focus on why some customers or segments have proven difficult to serve at reasonable margins, or which have not so far generated enough gross revenue.

That will not be an instinctive reaction, as competitors typically will have incentives to launch attacks at a firm's best customers, leading an incumbent to focus even more attention on the "best" customers.

On the other hand, attackers also have incentives to attack those customer segments that are not well served by incumbents. Short-haul or discount airlines have proven troublesome for incumbent airlines, for example.

The point, say analysts at Telco 2.0, is to seriously examine why a particular customer segment cannot be served at a reasonable profit, and retool the delivery system so a reasonable profit can be made.

10 'Innovation Principles' for success in a disrupted (Telco) marketplace

Where are the Broadband Apps?

Some people probably just can’t understand why more than 70 percent of Americans are happy with their existing broadband service. The usual explanation for this state of affairs (besides blaming people for being "dumb") is that there are no applications driving consumer demand because broadband is too slow to allow for higher bandwidth applications.

Experience from markets where 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps service is available suggest it is applications that lag, even when bandwidth is not a particular problem. After 10 years, what truly important applications have developed in markets such as South Korea, for example? You might point to gaming or video on demand.

But some of us would argue those are relatively trivial innovations. They don't seem to change a nation's productivity, and neither of those apps are "new" things we hadn't thought of before.

With over 40 million broadband homes since 2008 with more than 6 Mbps of connectivity, one would expect that there would be more applications that require and thrive at 6 Mbps, some would argue. There arguably are new things people do that involve piracy (content), and there might be some premium subscription services that have at least some penetration.

Don't get me wrong; it is entertaining to watch YouTube or Hulu. I'm just not sure that was what we generally had in mind when we have argued that huge pipes would lead to all sorts of interesting and socially or economically useful new developments. New ways to watch television are interesting to lots of people and companies, to be sure.

But was that what you had in mind?

Digital Society � Blog Archive � Reality check – Americans like their broadband service

Google Growth Uneven

Some observers caution that Google is over-estimated where it comes to innovation. "Not everything Google does succeeds," that line of thinking goes. And of course that is quite correct. Lots of things Google has done have not been runaway successes. Some initiatives have failed, plain and simple. GTalk hasn't caught on, and Google bought YouTube because Google's home-grown video site wasn't getting traction.

Perhaps the implication is that potential competitors shouldn't fear Google as much as they seem to, as Google fails often enough. Perhaps the other way to look at matters is the frequency with which Google does, in fact, succeed, compared to the number of attempts. And given the number of attempts, the more Google fails, the more it will discover things that work.

Sure, Google seems to go off on tangents now and then. Google defends these explorations as attempts to find other really big businesses. Maybe. And maybe Google just goes off on tangents now and then. Either way, the attempt to start new things is going to lead to lots of failures, if Google tries enough new things. Some of us might argue that is precisely what makes Google so fearsome: it innovates so fast for a firm its size.

Still, the observation that Google does not succeed with much of anything outside of search might be premature. Even "search" took a while to catch on. So, no, Google does not immediately dominate "every" market or segment it enters. It experiments. It fails. If it succeeds 10 percent of the time, and fails often enough, it just might discover some significant-sized new businesses.

Enterprise Software Not Where It's At Anymore

The future of enterprise computing will draw from what is being developed on the consumer side, says Paul Otellini, Intel CEO. "Consumers today are the number one users of semiconductors; they passed over IT and government in 2004."

"Prior to that period, most people developing silicon in the industry were focused on the main market: the enterprise and IT," says Otellini. "Today, most of us are focused on the consumer market as drivers."

"Not so long ago, if you were technology-oriented and wanted to do something innovative and cool that would make you rich, you wrote a new piece of enterprise software," he says. "Or you came up with a new design for a server. Or you figured out a way to link business people with their offices while on the road."

That's just not the case anymore. Innovation is coming from the consumer Web.