Its interesting to consider if Google is innovative when you take a bucket of corporate innovation and divide by the (immense) number of employees. I'm not asking if they purchase innovative new/little companies, I'm well aware they do that. I'm not claiming no innovation comes out of Google HQ, why I'm sure they output at least as much innovation as perhaps a 1000 person research lab, maybe even twice that, of course the whole point of the problem is they have 60K employees...
All I'm claiming is you pour the innovation out of Google Corp Hq into a bucket and, um, how about MIT Media Lab into a bucket, and measure the two buckets on a scale. I feel MIT wins handily. But for the sake of argument lets say Google kicks the MIT Media Lab's butt to the tune of 10x as much innovation. There is still a slight problem in that the MIT lab is about 100 people (to one sig fig) and Google Corp is just under 60K according to a Google search. Assuming similar quality of "human resources" Google should be consistently producing 600 times as much innovation per year as MIT Media Lab. Maybe when you factor in Google's company purchases, after which all innovation at the purchased company traditionally ceases...
Isn't Google fundamentally on the scales of justice more of a profitable advertising sales boiler room than a source of innovation?
If as a company, its mostly about being a sales boiler room, then it should look like a sales boiler room, shouldn't it? Perhaps there is less inconsistency between what is observed vs theory after all.
THIS. Fact is, mixing number crunchers with sales folk is the crux of the problem. If light/personal conversation took place away from the work area, both open offices and cubes would be much more productive and pleasant.
The essence of making workspaces work is minimizing distractions. Any layout can work if you take the chatter ELSEWHERE.
All I'm claiming is you pour the innovation out of Google Corp Hq into a bucket and, um, how about MIT Media Lab into a bucket, and measure the two buckets on a scale. I feel MIT wins handily. But for the sake of argument lets say Google kicks the MIT Media Lab's butt to the tune of 10x as much innovation. There is still a slight problem in that the MIT lab is about 100 people (to one sig fig) and Google Corp is just under 60K according to a Google search. Assuming similar quality of "human resources" Google should be consistently producing 600 times as much innovation per year as MIT Media Lab. Maybe when you factor in Google's company purchases, after which all innovation at the purchased company traditionally ceases...
Isn't Google fundamentally on the scales of justice more of a profitable advertising sales boiler room than a source of innovation?
If as a company, its mostly about being a sales boiler room, then it should look like a sales boiler room, shouldn't it? Perhaps there is less inconsistency between what is observed vs theory after all.