“The story of innovation has not changed. It has always been a small team of people who have a new idea, typically not understood by people around them and their executives.”
—Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google

Some of the most frequent questions we get from CEOs and leaders of other companies are: How does Google innovate? Can innovation be planned? Can it be taught? Ultimately, we think that company culture and innovation can’t be separated. “You have to have the culture,” says Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, “and you need to get it right.” We also believe that to stay competitive, we (and every other company in the world) absolutely have to innovate.

So how do you create a culture of innovation? Google doesn’t have a secret formula, though we’ve done our best to find one over the years. But we have distilled our thinking into a set of basic principles—ideas we believe can be adapted and applied at pretty much any organization, regardless of size or industry.

In this Google for Work perspective, we’ll share these eight principles of innovation and show how we apply them inside Google.

1. Think 10x
The notion of “10x thinking” is at the heart of how we innovate at Google. To put the idea simply: true innovation happens when you try to improve something by 10 times rather than by 10%.

2. Launch, then keep listening
The restaurant business has a smart idea called the “soft opening.” Instead of hoping everything is perfect and inviting the entire public to arrive all at once, a new cafe will have a few days or weeks where they invite people in, learn what works, discover
what customers love, and slowly grow (they hope) into a successful business that everyone is talking about.

3. Share everything you can
At Google we believe that collaboration—that is, people working together in teams—is essential to innovation. And collaboration happens best when you share information openly. So as a company, we share as much as possible with employees. This doesn’t mean every last business or strategic detail, but we do strive for transparency.

4. Hire the right people
Google has grown at a rapid rate: from 2,000 Googlers a decade ago to more than 50,000 now. What we hope hasn’t changed is the kind of people who work here and the types of projects they like to work on. Ever since our very first hires, Google has worked hard to attract people who want to tackle big problems that matter and do great things for the world.

5. Use the 70/20/10 model
We’re firm believers in a concept first introduced in the early days of Google: the 70/20/10 model. Simply put, it means that:

• 70% of our projects are dedicated to our core business
  
• 20% of our projects are related to our core business
  
• 10% of our projects are unrelated to our core business
  

6. Look for ideas everywhere
The best ideas can’t all possibly come from any one team, one department or one company. We believe great ideas can be found anywhere, and we look for them everywhere.

7. Use data, not opinions
Data usually beats opinions. So at Google, data is a big part of every choice we make. We test and measure almost everything we do so that we have a continuous data stream to inform our decisions.

8. Focus on users, not the competition
We believe that if we focus on users, everything else will follow. If you can build a robust and loyal base of people who love what you do, you’ll have something rare and valuable. For us, that always starts with the desire to improve the lives of users.

For a copy of the full whitepaper "Creating a Culture of Innovation" please click here.