June 7, 2011

71) Google Wave

危 wēi  danger

A couple of weeks ago an entrepreneur I respect told me that Google had “lost it”.  He pointed to the high profile failure of Wave, which was released to the general public in May last year as clear cut evidence. At the time, Wave was heralded as the future of communication.  It was billed as a web-based platform and communications protocol that would merge the best features of e-mail, instant messaging and social networking, enabling users to communicate both synchronously and asynchronously. Its launch was hotly anticipated, invitations were even sold for up to $70 on auction sites.

But, despite this initial buzz the uptake was poor, and Google announced that it was going to suspend the product’s development in August, just 3 months after launch.  As my friend said, surely this was clear evidence that Google was losing its way?

机 jī opportunity

I see the failure of Wave differently.  Firstly, I respect the fact that Google is still failing with product launches, albeit a high profile one in this case.  It appears that its Innovation Time Off programme (in which employees can use 20% of their time to work on any project that interests them) is still alive and kicking.  It would be easy for Google to sit back on its laurels and focus on its core business, after all its most recent quarterly profit was $2.3 billion.  But instead, it seems to retain its hunger: some launches end in failure but many of Google’s successes, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from Innovation Time Off.

Secondly, with the benefit of hindsight, I like the way that Google handled the ‘failure’ of Wave.  It made the decision swiftly, even though it had sunk significant resource into the project, and looked at the residual value in the product before choosing to retire the code absolutely. Much of the code was handed to the Apache Software Foundation and turned into Wave-in-a-box: it made sense to open up code that Google couldn’t obviously benefit from to the open source community as any developments would probably drive the usage of Google tools. In addition, Google held on to some of the code and I have started to see Wave functionality appear in other Google products.  Most obviously is its use in Google Docs “Discussions”. Discussions happen alongside documents, they can refer to selected parts of a document, and can be accessed both in the Google Docs interface and also by email.   You can watch a video on the product here.  Given that Google is now benefitting from many of the Wave features that were well received it seems odd to call it an total failure, and even more odd to point to it as an indication that Google has “lost it”.

At IDEO we enjoy developing sacrificial prototypes which we put in front of consumers to test hypotheses.  We call them sacrificial because they are designed for learning rather than as the final solution, we are never too emotionally wedded to them.  With the rapid compression of time and costs to launch startups the Wave story and Apple choosing to discontinue Mobile Me yesterday make me wonder if we will see a trend toward ‘sacrifical startups’ – launched to learn and test approaches with successful aspects rolled over into new startups or folded back into the core business swiftly even if the startup fails?

How About…

  • Judging companies not by their failures but by the blend of successes and failures and how they handle the latter?
  • Failing fast and looking for the value in the embers?
  • Launching sacrificial startups: specifically to learn from consumer reaction to individual parts of the offer?

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February 2, 2010

34) Mars

Mars Logo

危 wēi  danger

In 2000, Dan Michael, then R&D director for Mars‘ M&Ms brand, and his team had the idea to make customizable M&Ms printed with a word of the customer’s choosing.  The team had experimented and found a way of printing the text but when they took the idea to senior management it was met with some concern, mainly because no marketing plan or consumer feedback existed.  They may have also feared that allowing Michael and his team to pursue the opportunity would distract them from business as usual and the proposed direct sales approach might alienate Mars’ largest retailers.

机 jī opportunity

Unperturbed, Michael’s team of 12 entered the innovation into a recently launched Mars initiative called Pioneer Week.  The concept won and the team received a modest budget with specific targets attached – building a production line within 90 days and marketing the innovation to all of Mars’ 60,000 employees (bypassing many of Mars’ conventional procedures which would have slowed the process at best).  The potential became self-evident – the team received orders for 800 pounds of custom-printed white M&Ms on the first day (the only option offered initially).  The team also solicited feedback as to why purchases had been made and used the trial to experiment with pricing.  The initiative was subsequently rolled out through a small link on the M&Ms public website (with no additional marketing) with continued success (and learning by the team).  In 2006 the trial was formally launched as Mars Direct and it is estimated that shortly thereafter ‘sales surpassed $10m and continued to accelerate’.

How about…

  • Allowing teams to initially develop ideas in Skunkworks (a small group of people given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy)?
  • Inviting teams to initially market a simple version of new products and services to your own employees or your partners’ employees to assess interest and learn?
  • Adopting a ‘discovery-driven’ approach to investigating new business ideas, minimizing investment and maximizing learning?

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Source: BusinessWeek article here