Women and Innovation: Driving Change in Consumer Technology
From Anita Borg Institute Wiki
Notes by Tao Wang, GHC 2006 web volunteer
Google principles from the talk by Marissa Mayer:
- Ideas come from everywhere --> Allies not adorers.
- Share everything you can. --> Find and build a comfortable community.
- A license to pursue dreams. --> Passion is a gender-neutralizing force.
- Innovation not instant perfection. --> You can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket.
- Data is A-political. --> But data can sometimes tell you about politics.
- Creativity loves constraints. --> Embrace what you've good at.
- Users, users, users. --> Find your rhythm and your focus.
- Youre brilliant. --> We're hiring.
Notes by Moya Watson
Marissa Mayer - VP of Search Products and User Experience at Google - introduced the "8 principles of innovation" at Google, and then went back through them all to underscore particular relevance of each principle for women.
1) Ideas come from everywhere Ideas might come from the bottom-up - from people building great prototypes. Engineers might spend the weekend building a prototype and take it to fruition. Or, ideas might come from strategic exercises to understand holes in the product line.
Do product ideas come directly from users and their needs, or do the engineers dream up products to fill needs users perhaps haven't thought of (concretely) yet? A little of both - Google News, for instance wasn't something people were clamoring for, but it was something the engineer wanted to build.
Foster an open culture of innovation - have several forums in which to capture ideas. Surround yourselves with allies, not adorers.
2) Share everything you can Find / build a comfortable community. Make it easy to find out what you are doing. At Google, people send a 5-10 line email every week to weekly@google that talks about what they are working on. This mail is published to a shared site and is (of course) searchable - so everyone can see what everyone else is working on.
Information is power? Rather - spreading of information is power.
3) A license to pursue dreams "20% time" - one day every week to work on whatever you want. Does this just throw away 20% productivity? On the contrary - more than 50% of launched products come from 20% time.
"Passion is a gender-neutralizing force."
4) Innovation is not instant perfection 10-20% of the ideas work. 40% languish. 40% are somewhere in between. It's important to "fail fast" and iterate.
"Mac and Madonna theory" - they consistently reinvented themselves. They also forgave their missteps. "You can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket."
5) Data is A-political Since things are data-driven at Google, they constantly are just trying out ideas on the site. They can run, for example, two different design ideas on the Web site and then use statistics to prove which design is better. They are "crazy about math and data and scoring" and this sort of real-world field test makes design more science, less art - and reduces political battles between design architects.
6) Creativity loves constraint You have to think out of the box in an interesting way. You need the constraints for the creativity to take hold.
Before Marissa joined Google (in 1999), she remembers thinking she was too young to find out what she was good at yet. She picked Google exactly because she didn't think she'd be good at it (risk) - and thought she'd learn a lot more failing at Google than succeeding elsewhere.
7) Users, users, users Users drive business at Google. The business grows because the users like it. Marissa's one of the owners of the Google homepage and has to keep it clean and minimalistic. She says people are constantly offering to 'buy' the homepage for a day.
"After you search we know a lot about you" - then they can target the ads and provide value. But not before. Difference between selling ads on the homepage vs selling ads on the results page is the promotion of the user experience. If you're really solving a problem of users that's fundamental, you'll find a way to monetize it (or it supports monetized projects).
In personal application, study your own habits enough so that you know what matters to you. Find your rhythm and focus. You might be able to take early calls or work late, but if you miss that regular Tuesday night dinner or your kid's soccer game, you might get all out of whack and feel resentful towards the company.
8) You're brilliant. We're hiring The first seven principles mean chaos. Management structure at Google in Engineering is flat. You need smart people that are well-directed. Work with the smartest people you can find. Play with better players.
She mentioned she thought the culture of Google goes back to the founders - who are "Montessori kids" - all the way back in preschool, they did what they wanted and questioned authority. They also didn't want to work for anyone else.
