Comments on: Google’s Ten Golden Rules – Is the Article a Bad Sign?

By: laurence haughton

laurence haughton — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 00:24:31 +0000

BTW it’s a very small point but I’m almost postitive Drucker did not invent the term “knowledge worker in 1959″ or any other year. I’m sorting through my files but I remember reading him giving credit to someone else for that.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 23:08:40 +0000

David,
That’s a good point, but my concern is that Google is focused on attracting great engineers, not great businesspeople. They don’t seem to mention marketing, operations, business development, etc. at all – in anything you read about them.

I love Google’s idea of throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks, but ultimately in business you need an economic model to back it up. Some things should be reserved for fun side projects, and some things for pure research. Can Google actually do anything with what they are building?

For example, I could hire all of the world’s best basketball athletes and let them workout all day and practice crazy things in hopes they come up with some new plays. But they still have to play a game, and they still have to execute as a team to win. Google is releasing all kinds of cool things that have no business model behind them. Maybe they find a way to monetize them, but until they do, their current valuation just isn’t justified.

By: laurence haughton

laurence haughton — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 15:22:24 +0000

David’s right. The competitve advantage is to attract and retain great people.

But there’s a gap between what companies say and what they do. Follow through is the hard part.

By: David Ferrabee

David Ferrabee — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 13:17:56 +0000

Perhaps I am looking at this from a different end of the telescope, but attracting and retaining good people in our new white-collar world is increasingly fundamental to creating a competitive advantage. What you see Google doing here is setting up their stall as a great employer. You can argue whether or not that is correct, but for them it is a differentiator: “come out of your mom’s basement and join our team. We’ll even walk your dog for you.” It’s a proposition. And it will pRobably work quite well for them.
/df

By: laurence haughton

laurence haughton — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 22:01:23 +0000

Yes the conclusions of the PIMS studies have endured. (Profit in Market Share). But if you review the original thinking you’ll see that the PIMS assumptions have been proven to be mostly false.

So false assumptions have endured… how unbusinesslike!

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 21:11:29 +0000

Laurence,
Companies still have that “economies of scale” mindset that drove manufacturers to be big. It’s hard to escape that past. In knowledge work, economies of scale are very different.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 00:23:21 +0000

Drucker was not quite right, just as the Vienna era that he came out of was not quite right, but we learn as we grow older and explore different theories and concepts. Brock is in error about his statement regarding “how human brains operate.” Our brains are complex but I believe we can comprehend even that aspect. The trouble is we pRobably have already dismisse or hurt people enough to where they find it difficult to connect with those who do not value theory and application.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 23:33:53 +0000

An awful lot of the innovation that I’ve seen in business has been driven by creative sales and marketing people…indeed, engineers (especially software engineers) have often been more concerned with issues of internal architecture and produceability than with anything having to do with the customer.

By: David G

David G — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 22:37:54 +0000

Very astute, as always, Rob.

On the 1st issue about demifying engineers; I’ve seen this before at another .com giant, where the effects were devastating – this company went so far as to move everyone on the books who didn’t write C-code, (and their line management), to “indirect labor” on the balance sheet. That was a tough message to deliver to the MBA’s doing 18-hr days and 12-hour flights who actually ran the operation. The most innovative operators either left or stopped innovating (or learned C . The company went from leading the .com race to being excluded from the GYM acronym

On the 2nd issue –> again, I think you nailed it … google’s strategy is URL-centric but Web2 is moving beyond the URL’s 1:1 limitations, which is a pRoblem for search.

Great Post, Thanks

By: laurence haughton

laurence haughton — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 21:32:24 +0000

Oh yeah to answer your question “Is the Article a Bad Sign?”

Rob, the bad sign is that Google got big. The last 100 years have proven that big is a bad bet in business. The baggage that goes along with being big is overwhelming for most firms. It makes you slow and stupid. Reopen my book “It’s Not the Big that Eat the Small… It’s the FAST that Eat the Slow.”

Whether or not Goggle can beat those “big” odds remains to be seen.