Yesterday, the New York Times ran a good article entitled ”Clash of the Titans: Google Gets Ready to Rumble with Microsoft.” After reading it, I’m convinced that in the long-run Google will prevail over Mr. Softy.
Here’s why. First, Microsoft is still producing products within a two to three year product cycle (sometimes even longer as was the case with Vista), while Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, claims that its “product road map maps look ahead only four to five months at most.” In today’s “Exponential Economy,” the latter approach is the only sustainable one because in a world where change is constant and the advancement of computer processing power, data storage, Bandwidth, and software development is advancing exponentially—two to three years is an eternity!
Secondly, the article highlighted Google’s culture of peer review. You might recall that last month I wrote about Google’s innovative approach to developing new platforms for its forthcoming GooglePhone; but after reading the article I was really impressed with how Google has positioned itself to seize any opportunities that might come out of this open-source initiative.
Specifically, the article profiles how the company was able to release a new cellphone software, codenamed Grand Prix, in just six weeks. In short, from the time an engineer at Google created the prototype, it took only 42 days to get the software into the hands of consumers. There were no lengthy formal product reviews, nor did it have to be vetted by layers of middle managers. All of this was allowed to happen at a breakneck pace because the company has embraced peer review.
In so doing, Google has institutionalized a process for not only ensuring good ideas raise to the top, it also enables those ideas to get even better as they move toward the commercial marketplace. And this is precisely the type of culture that will help the company continue to jump the curve and, ultimately, give Google a competitive advantage over company’s such as Microsoft.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
