Sunday, November 2, 2014

Works for Google, but…

How Google Works – Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg (Grand Central Publishing)

Google Executive Chairman and ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and former Senior Vice President of Products Jonathan Rosenberg offer up an insider’s view of what is not only one of the world’s most successful tech companies, but clearly one of the world’s most successful companies, period; in their new book How Google Works.

While Schmidt and Rosenberg offer up a veritable gold mine of Google’s often different world view on business topics ranging from culture to strategy and innovation to talent hiring, the question I am left with is while clearly this is a “business” book, are these insights and strategies transferable to the “real world.”


Start ups and the tech sector can clearly learn from principles espoused by these Google leaders, but in long established businesses were change, if it comes, it occurs at glacial pace and is often accompanied with a heavy dose of pain; I’m not so sure these principles are transferable.

Certainly this isn’t to say that more traditional business models can’t learn from How Google Works. The sections on problems being information related and communications can teach even the stodgiest of businesses how to operate in a more open and inclusive manner when it comes to sharing information both internally and externally.

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