At the forefront of technology
What happened?
Google wanted to encourage its staff to keep coming up with fresh and exciting ideas so it introduced the 70-20-10 formula. Examples include News search, Maps, Picasa (free software to share, edit and view photos), Blogger, Gmail, and more. Like other Google products, it was designed with the 'users first' principle in mind. By using this approach Google believes that the business runs in a unique way and is a positive driver for innovation.
How does the 70-20-10 formula work?
- 70% of Google's resources are focused on the core product; search and ads. Google is fundamentally about search, so it will always focus on that: consistently broadening its index, improving search quality and improving what search results look like. The ads that are served next to the natural search results not only drive Google’s revenues, but provide valuable information to a user in themselves because they are relevant to the search query and targeted to people who are actually looking for what is in the ad
- 20% of Google’s resources are spent on encouraging experimental ideas that are related directly to the core product. Search is still at the core of these products, but is less fundamental to the usage of the product. Examples include news search, Maps, Picasa (free software to share, edit and view photos), Blogger, Gmail, and more
- 10% of Google’s resources are spent on 'thinking outside the box'. Google likes to take risks and encourages "crazy ideas" that might never make money or be viable, but that are genuinely new and interesting ways of thinking about technology. Projects like Google Talk (an instant messaging service) and Google Code (which aims to share code with the rest of the world) are examples of initiatives that don't and will likely never make any money, but are important to fostering innovation and keeping engineers excited!
Personal development
Employees are encouraged to work on personal projects with 20% of their time. This could mean working on a new product, something that improves life at Google such as a system to get WiFi on a shuttle bus or starting a Google-wide campaign to encourage "green" behaviour, or simply getting to know another part of the company. Google believes that happy, interested employees make products that will keep users happy and interested as well.
An example of the success of the 70-20-10 formula
Google Mail began as a 20% project, the time set aside for Google employees to be creative.
An engineer was frustrated because he could not find in his email inbox a recipe that his wife had sent him. So he wrote a script that could search his email. He was using it during a meeting and a product director saw the idea and saw its potential: searchable email. This was an excellent project for a search engine company.
Soon, a team of engineers was set to work on this project and before the frustrated engineer knew it, Google Mail was launched
Like other Google products, it was designed with 'users first' principle in mind: Google Mail stores emails on Google's servers, not the user's computer, so it can be accessed from anywhere (universal access). Google gives users a big storage limit for free so they don't have to delete their emails.