One of my previous posts talked about a few ways in which organisations often end up falling into an inefficiency trap. There was a considerable amount of discussion about why this could happen. Since one of the obsessions I've explored on this blog is re the constituents of organisational design and how some choices leave you in unenviable failure mode, this is what I learnt from creating a 2x2 to explain why large organizations suck at innovation.
They studied the success of OSRD during WW2 and came up with some principles. To put them simply they were:
1. Innovation occurs only in small group of people (15-30), any larger number and the innovative ability of the group decreases.
2. Innovation requires a diverse group of individuals. They don't mean diverse in the modern blacks, latino, female sense. They meant diverse as in a missile development team should have a shop floor mechanic, theoretical physicist, aerodynamics expert etc, as many viewpoints relevant to the problem as possible.
3. Innovation requires a flat hierarchy, anyone should feel free to share their ideas to the boss and the boss should be capable of finding which of them are worth pursuing
4. Innovative organisations require rapid prototyping and external contracting. Anything unrelated to the problem they want to solve should be sent to outside contractors to solve so that they don't waste time in it, and rapid continuous prototyping is better than time spent excessive planning on the drawing board.
5. Innovative organisations require a large risk tolerance. They shouldn't forever be in need of money, ideally they should have enough money to fail a couple of times without worrying about closing down.
Apart from this I would say expecting Google as the large organisation being innovative is unrealistic, but small groups within google are quite innovative. Google is no bell labs but Google has invented Tensorflow, Waymo, Alpha-Zero and maybe something in Quantum Computing in recent history so it's no slouch either. I also suspect having a good 'taste' in choosing problems is important. Regardless of how amazing your group, if you end up choosing an incremental problem or too outlandish a problem, both will end up as a waste of time.
There has been some research on what makes organisations innovative from post WW2 defence departments like this book: https://www.amazon.com/Sidewinder-Creative-Missile-Development-China/dp/1591149819
They studied the success of OSRD during WW2 and came up with some principles. To put them simply they were:
1. Innovation occurs only in small group of people (15-30), any larger number and the innovative ability of the group decreases.
2. Innovation requires a diverse group of individuals. They don't mean diverse in the modern blacks, latino, female sense. They meant diverse as in a missile development team should have a shop floor mechanic, theoretical physicist, aerodynamics expert etc, as many viewpoints relevant to the problem as possible.
3. Innovation requires a flat hierarchy, anyone should feel free to share their ideas to the boss and the boss should be capable of finding which of them are worth pursuing
4. Innovative organisations require rapid prototyping and external contracting. Anything unrelated to the problem they want to solve should be sent to outside contractors to solve so that they don't waste time in it, and rapid continuous prototyping is better than time spent excessive planning on the drawing board.
5. Innovative organisations require a large risk tolerance. They shouldn't forever be in need of money, ideally they should have enough money to fail a couple of times without worrying about closing down.
Apart from this I would say expecting Google as the large organisation being innovative is unrealistic, but small groups within google are quite innovative. Google is no bell labs but Google has invented Tensorflow, Waymo, Alpha-Zero and maybe something in Quantum Computing in recent history so it's no slouch either. I also suspect having a good 'taste' in choosing problems is important. Regardless of how amazing your group, if you end up choosing an incremental problem or too outlandish a problem, both will end up as a waste of time.