Keeping Google Googley

HBR Case Analysis - Google

Keeping Google “Googley”

Case Analysis - Final

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12/04/2014

Keeping Google “Googley”

Introduction & Case Overview

• Google was established in 1998 by founders Larry Page and Siergey Brin. As they worked to complete their PHD in computer science they developed an algorithm that revolutionized the rapidly growing internet community. With the new algorithm Google was able to combine search with marketing in a way that benefited both the user and Google’s advertising partners.

• In less than a decade Google went from a small internet search startup to the world’s largest search provider. The company went public in 2004 earning $3.2 billion in revenues with approximately 3000 employees. By 2007 the Google was earning nearly $17 billion in annual revenue with nearly 17,000 employees. Google’s astounding revenue generation was led primarily by two products, AdSense, and AdWords. These two products pushed targeted links and ads from key advertising clients related to the search results of the user. Kim Scott joined the Google in 2004 as director of AdSense.

• Employees at Google attribute much of the success to the relatively flat organizational structure and consensus management style. Undoubtedly these traits created an entrepreneurial environment where driven brilliant minds were free to ask challenging questions and push the boundaries of current technology.

• The success and break-neck speed at which the company was growing left some leaders like Kim Scott wondering if Google could maintain the same free-thinking entrepreneurship mentality. She feared the innovative culture of the company, a trait described as “being Googley”, would suffer under the weight of increased bureaucracy. She questioned how Google could maintain remain “Googley” and what her organization could do to avoid the common traits of large organization that stifled creativity and innovation.

1. How would you assess the “Entrepreneurial Intensity” of Google since its beginning? What factors made it entrepreneurial? What did Google founders do to perpetuate innovation and entrepreneurship at the company?

Morris, Kuratko, and Covin describe entrepreneurship as a variable quality. Every organization has some level of entrepreneurship. The question is how to measure the level of entrepreneurship or “Entrepreneurial Intensity”. There exists an endless number of methods to measure qualitative aspects of entrepreneurship,