Swedish researcher Annika Steiber at Chalmers University of Technology has completed a unique research on Google and the research has revealed various interesting facts about the search engine.
Steiber has been lucky to get access to the company’s headquarters Googleplex for nearly a year like no other researcher ever had.
On site in California, Steiber spent nearly a year studying how Google is managed and organized so as to be able to maintain its high innovative capacity. The study is based on in-depth interviews with 28 employees.
Among other things, they were asked to rank various possible explanations for Google’s success in constantly developing new services that people want to use.
“Many factors play a huge role, above all the corporate culture that the founders brought with them from the outset and that has then been deliberately developed to steer the whole company in the direction of constant innovation,” says Steiber.
“It’s also striking to see the focus Google has when it comes to bringing in the right individuals to the company and developing them,” she added.
These two factors interact. The status of the individual is very strong at Google. The company devotes great resources to comprehensive recruitment processes in which many associates have their say in order to bring in the right people for the organization.
The organisation is also structured to reinforce the culture and to help its individuals to perform and create innovations in line with the company philosophy.
Being ‘Googley’ means that an employee behaves in accordance with company values. This concept is internally documented today at Google and consists of eleven ‘characteristics’.
Three of them are having a passion to change the world through the Internet, being smart, and being non-political. Doing good is a fourth, ‘Don’t be evil’.
Many interviewees testified that they were attracted to the company because of these stated values.