Innovation and Leadership in Google

This assignment focuses on the challenges of innovation and leadership in Google. It discusses the innovation models followed by Google, the leadership challenges faced by the company, and provides recommendations for fostering innovation in the organization.

Innovation and Leadership in Goggle
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2Innovation and Leadership in Google
ABSTRACT
The current assignment focuses on a business case for innovation and leadership as well. The
paper highlights the leadership and innovation challenges in company. In order to understand
more briefly the chosen organization is Google. The study focuses on the current leadership and
innovation challenges in the organization with theoretical concepts and frameworks. The paper
also depicts how to overcome those challenges and initiate effective innovation in the
organization. At last recommendation and conclusion are addressed for the organization.

3Innovation and Leadership in Google
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Discussion........................................................................................................................................5
Innovation Models in Google......................................................................................................5
The Leadership Challenges at Google.........................................................................................6
Leadership in Innovation at Google............................................................................................9
Google’s leadership style...........................................................................................................10
Recommendation...........................................................................................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
Reference.......................................................................................................................................13

4Innovation and Leadership in Google
Introduction
In this contemporary business world, companies are very keen in bringing innovation.
This is due to emerging competition, globalization, and technological advancement and most
importantly due to the bargaining power and demand of the customers. Therefore, there are two
sectors where the organization focuses on that is innovation and leadership, in order to overcome
these above factors of the external and internal environment. This paper highlights the current
challenges of leadership and how innovation has taken a wide toll in the organization. The paper
primarily focuses on the company Google. The current study proposes theoretical insight,
justifications and challenges the organization face while carrying out a framework for
innovation. The paper focuses on identifying the key factors which drives the company to adapt
innovation and how they assess them in their workplace.

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Discussion
Google, the most renowned company in the global world, Google has been observed to
illuminate innovation and development in the market over the years. In the initial stage the
search engine innovation led to Pagerank algorithm. Google aims at remaining competitively
active in the business world and therefore strives at being highly innovative. At the initial stage
on order to remain costs reasonable, Google built its own server in-house with the utilization of
cheap commodities and Velcro fasteners used for quick swapping of the components (Rosenbach
2018). This approach of Google was found to be very novel innovations. Goggle decided to
develop its own software layers for smooth running of servers and to work in a flaunt-tolerant
way. This initial approach led to many innovations in Google such as MapReduce.
As Goggle’s productivity grows, so its innovativeness grows simultaneously. The factors
which strives the type and amount of innovation in a company is potentially determined by its
organizational culture, organization technical abilities, respect to innovation, its leadership
qualities and this factors leads to certain models in the organization (Ginnett, 2019). Google aims
to follow two different innovation models the actual innovation are the subsets of the starting
innovation potential (Jiang and Chen, 2018). The innovation models results in integration of
existing technology and products and are closely aligned with the products and others lead to the
innovations in areas peripheral to the organization’s current focus. Henry Chesbrough developed
the concept of open and closed innovation.
Innovation Models in Google
Open Innovation, involves the contribution and collaboration from and to, from the
external source that is outside the company. On the other hand the closed innovation is kept

6Innovation and Leadership in Google
under wraps and in-house until it hits the market. The results of both the models are quite
different. Google follows both the models. Such examples of both open and closed innovation
are android and Chrome OS and Google wave is an example of closed innovation. In addition to
these universal models Google also influence “top-down innovation and entrepreneurial
innovation”. The top-down innovation is usually for the established companies the example is
Translate technology and Google objective is to organize a better search engine with translation
advancement. The entrepreneurial innovation, in the article “The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton
M. Christensen focused on the challenges which are focused by the established companies
specially the company top-management or leader. The company tries to gain competitive
advantage and try to satisfy the needs and demands of the customers
The Leadership Challenges at Google
Leadership in organization is the most important and critical part that must be focused on.
Effective leadership brings betterment and productivity in the organization. A company like
Google even faced leadership challenges. It is evident from the recent researches that there are
quiet disturbances involved within the Company regarding their leadership. The Alphabet, the
parent company of Google has made only 6 percent of the entire tech conglomeration’s
workforce. Therefore, due to the technical hurdles with the startups there is crisis in leadership
and is facing numerous challenges. The Alphabet’s financial strictness was found to be key
factor; the short-term revenue plan has created immense disturbances in the growth of the
company. The leadership challenges has been seen to be stemmed due to the internal clashes that
is due to acquisition of security-camera startup Dropcam the product did not gave good results as
per their expectation. Goggle has faced challenges regarding diversity in the organization as
well. However, with technical issues the company is now not only in technology, accounting and

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engineering business but also in leadership business. Google is showing reluctance towards soft
skills and focusing more on building hard skills. In order to over the leadership challenges the
executives need to have range of perspectives beyond their business expertise. The concept of
Big Five Model would demonstrate better regarding the above statement. A leader must possess
the traits of OCEAN like openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and
neuroticism. According to basic administrative skills the executive must have higher percentage
of conceptual and emotional intelligence skills than the technical ones. The Google leaders need
to have a face-face and open communication with the employees in the organization. Effective
communication helps to build employee-employer relation and can bring out possible
alternatives for the various obstacles. This concept is basically based on LMX theory, leader-
member exchange theory that is centered or focused on the interaction between the subordinates
and the leaders. According to the recent challenges and obstacles dealt by the company it is
better if the organization leaders adapt the concept of situational leadership. The situational
leadership suggests that the leaders must adopt different leadership styles according to the
changing environment and situation in the external and internal of the organization. It is
observed to effective as the situational approach set beneficial balance and focus on the team
needs for the whole organization.
Innovation Challenges in Google
The innovation challenge is quiet significant in a company like Google like other
companies. Creating something new with whole new idea and concept is not easy and therefore,
there are multiple challenges linked and for a company like innovation is not limited. The
products and services which have been provided by Google and has been generating income
needs to be continually replaced by new creativity and efficiency. This is due to the ever-

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increasing demand of the customers and competition emerged in the global market. The reason
why most of the large and enviable companies lose their steam in the market and finally cease
out is due to the incapability of keeping pace with the market and technological development
Henceforth, in order to overcome these issues the company need to strengthen their employee
creativity and the capacity of innovation and ability to challenge organizational models and
conventional management. The number of employees in Google was over 20,000 and three was
complaint that the potential skills of the employees are being used in the organization.
Previously the optimum challenges for Google were expanding into new fields other than
web search engine business, smart speakers and personal assistance but at current phase
diversification became a bigger challenge. Diversification is another factor which has been
striking the company as how much to diversify its products in the market and how much to
control. Google has significantly moved into robotics, cloud storage, a web browser, and laptop
and tablet production, artificial intelligence mobile OS services. Moreover, solar energy
computer engines, cars, social media, augmented reality eyewear, social media. The company
needs to handle the products and service diversification and enable to understand how this
diversification will help the company to achieve and its mission and benchmarks respectively.
The other challenge faced by Google is competition rivals like Apple, Facebook, Twitter,
Worldwide, Amazon, HTC Corporation.
In order to face these challenges regarding innovations, Google can make sure of
maintaining a flat culture and procuring entrepreneurial innovations in its organizational
structure. The traditional job ladder structure will be not effective in the organization and hiring
right kind of candidate will make sure the continuation of innovation (Kouzes and Posner 2018).
On the other hand for to gain competitive advantage new strategies and research space needs to

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be maintained Google aims at ambidextrous organization that is following 70-20-10 rule in
which the employees are expected to devote their 70% of every work of the day to the project
assigned by the management and 20% of their working day to flourish the new ideas and projects
regarding their core projects. The rest 10% is for the new ideas which will be pursued or they
want to pursue in the coming days (Grossman and Valiga 2016). This approach initiates new
ideas and projects for the employees and bring new innovativeness and creativity in the
organization. The Google must build a decentralized organization structure as this would
facilitate the flow of decision-making by the employer as well as the employees in the
organization.
Leadership in Innovation at Google
The relation between the leadership and innovation puts a great significance in the
organizational performance and for competitive improvement. Effective leadership is also an
important aspect which must be nourished with innovation (Western 2019). The organizational
priorities with reference to leadership and innovation are fostered by management model in
various ways to support the company. Google has built an unorthodox management model that is
based on the six management models.
Dynamic Capabilities- The ability of the company Google, to develop, refigure and integrate
both the internal and external competencies so as to meet the constant change of the environment
(Schoemaker, Heaton and Teece 2018).
A system approach- The system approach of working is quite different from the conventional
linear way of working in the organization. This approach needs a whole holistic approach and

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understanding the whole corporate system and it shows hoe the segregated components in the
department work together.
An Ambidextrous organization- The conventional planning- control approach and
continuous innovation requires greater flexibility and freedom and an organization which gives
an open attitude to more exploration and experimentation.
A people-centric approach- The Company Google is people centric that are focusing on
the individuals to ensure that they are liberating their innovative and creative desires. This is an
approach or principle which is based on belief that the people can explore and drive their
creativity in the workplace (Donate and de Pablo, 2015). In order to enable this feature the
company needs to provide them with such settings in the organization so that they can express
their creativity.
A Dynamic organization- Google changes its working in the organization, according to
the changing environment of the market (Khalili 2016). If the organization delays in showing
and taking corrective actions until the problems arises then it may lack in gaining competitive
advantage. Google is adapts the proactive approach to change.
Google’s leadership style
People-centric approach- To prioritize leadership in innovation, the organization the
leaders needs to emphasize openness and transparency and build trust in the employees. Google
recruit the right candidate for the job, employee who can adapt the rapid changes and have high
level of competency and creativity.
70-20-10 rule of organization- This rules allows them to give enough time to show their
skills and innovativeness in the organization. The leaders must be give them flexibility and

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understand them. The semi-structure organization facilities both balance between the production
and innovation.

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Recommendation
The theoretical framework of leadership gives an overview how organization can
effectively assess innovation in the organization. The framework includes transformational
leadership, transactional leadership; the transformational leadership basically focuses on future
prospects and is concerned with planning and creating something new with open-minded energy
Zacher and Rosing, 2015). Thus this type of style leadership becomes role model and builds trust
and confidence within the employees. For a company like Google a transactional leader will
value order and structure of the organization ad focus on persisting both reward and punishment
to the employees. It provokes challenge to achieve something within the employees and hence
elevating their skills and capabilities.
Figure1: Framework for Effective Innovation and Leadership
(Source: Khalili 2016)

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Conclusion
The following study conducted gives a clear analysis and understanding of how
innovation is processed inside the organization and how leadership is the main driver for
initiating innovation in the organization. Google is an clear example which gives a clear
understanding that how, continuous innovation has been performed in Google and how the
leaders helps the employees and structure the workplace for encouraging innovation in Google.

14Innovation and Leadership in Google
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