Program Name: MBA

Course Code: MGMT5711

Course Name: Managing Creativity and Innovation
Assignment 1
Date of Submission: 7th June 2020

Submitted By: Submitted To:

GROUP G Faculty Name: Shobha Sapkota

Semester: 2nd Semester Department: MBA
Intake: December 2019
Prepared and Submitted By: Group G

S.N Group Member

1 Sumitra Basnet
2 Suraj Ban
3 Sushistha Tuladhar
4 Yathartha Joshi
Select any ONE (1) from the 10 most Innovative Company listed in 2019.
You are required to do the followings:

a. Carry out a secondary research on that selected company, collect information on the
progression of the company from its beginning to till date.
b. Produce in your report some of the following output:
 The challenges the company faced.
 The leadership change that have taken place over the years and its impact on the
creativity and innovation
 Structural change
 Team
 Others

Objectives:

 To test students’ capabilities of relating knowledge into application.

 To be able to process and interpret information with the use of technological resources.
 To be able to analyze and produce a good thinking capability.
 To develop an ability to think and produce creative ideas and suggestions.
 To synthesize knowledge from the given assignment.
Innovation in its modern meaning is "a new idea, creative thoughts, and new imaginations
in form of device or method". Innovation is often also viewed as the application of better
solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs. Such
innovation takes place through the provision of more-effective products, processes,
services, technologies, or business models that are made available to markets, governments
and society. An innovation is something original and more effective and, as a consequence,
new, that "breaks into" the market or society.

Innovation refers to creating more effective processes, products, and ideas. For a business,
it could mean implementing new ideas, improving services or creating dynamic products.
It can act as a catalyst that can make your business grow and can help you adapt in the
marketplace.

By innovation, we mean changing your business model and making changes in the existing
environment to deliver better products or services. Successful innovation should be a part
of your business strategy, where you can create a culture of innovation and make a way for
creative thinking. It can also increase the likelihood of your business succeeding and can
create more efficient processes that can result in better productivity and performance. For
that, business owners need innovation and creativity to find new things.

Here is the list The Most Innovative Companies of 2019 According to Boston Consulting
Group (BCG), which is a global management consulting firm and the world’s leading
advisor on business strategy. The theme for BCG’s 13th annual innovation survey is the
rising importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and of platforms that support innovation.
In this survey following companies were able to secure the position in the list as below:

1. Alphabet/Google
2. Amazon
3. Apple
4. Microsoft
5. Samsung
6. Netflix
7. IBM
8. Facebook
9. Tesla
10. Adidas

For our study of most innovative company of 2019, we have selected Google which rank
first in this survey. And below presented is the information gathered through secondary
research on this company.
Google

Google, in full Google LLC formerly Google Inc. (1998–2017), is an American

multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and
products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing,
software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Four technology companies
alongside Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. Google was founded in September 1998 by
Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in
California, as a subsidiary of the Alphabet Inc. More than 70 percent of worldwide online
search requests are handled by Google, placing it at the heart of most Internet users’
experience. Its headquarters are in Mountain View, California.

Initially, Google began as an online search firm, but it now offers more than 50 Internet
services and products, from e-mail and online document creation to software for mobile
phones and tablet computers. In addition, its 2012 acquisition of Motorola Mobility put it
in the position to sell hardware in the form of mobile phones. Google’s broad product
portfolio and size make it one of the top four influential companies in the high-tech
marketplace, along with Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. Despite this myriad of products, its
original search tool remains the core of its success. In 2016 Alphabet earned nearly all of
its revenue from Google advertising based on users’ search requests.

An Early History of Google

The Google story begins in 1995 at Stanford University. Larry Page was considering
Stanford for grad school and Sergey Brin, a student there, was assigned to show him
around. By some accounts, they disagreed about nearly everything during that first
meeting, but by the following year they struck a partnership. Working from their dorm
rooms, they built a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual
pages on the World Wide Web. They called this search engine Backrub.

Soon after, Backrub was renamed Google. The name was a play on the mathematical
expression for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros and aptly reflected Larry and Sergey's
mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and
useful.”

Over the next few years, Google caught the attention of not only the academic community,
but Silicon Valley investors as well. In August 1998, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim
wrote Larry and Sergey a check for $100,000, and Google Inc. was officially born. With
this investment, the newly incorporated team made the upgrade from the dorms to their
first office: a garage in suburban Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki (a staff
member and later CEO). Clunky desktop computers, a ping pong table, and bright blue
carpet set the scene for those early days and late nights. (The tradition of keeping things
colorful continues to this day.)

Even in the beginning, things were unconventional: from Google’s initial server (made of
Lego) to the first “Doodle” in 1998: a stick figure in the logo announcing to site visitors
that the entire staff was playing hooky at the Burning Man Festival. “Don't be evil”
captured the spirit of our intentionally unconventional methods. In the years that followed,
the company expanded rapidly – hiring engineers, building a sales team, and introducing
the first company dog, Yoshka. Google outgrew the garage and eventually moved to its
current headquarters (a.k.a.“The Googleplex”) in Mountain View, California. The spirit of
doing things differently made the move. So did Yoshka.

The Growth of Google

In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California, which is home to
several prominent Silicon Valley technology start-ups. The next year, Google began selling
advertisements associated with search keywords against Page and Brin's initial opposition
toward an advertising-funded search engine. To maintain an uncluttered page design,
advertisements were solely text-based. In June 2000, it was announced that Google would
become the default search engine provider for Yahoo!, one of the most popular websites at
the time, replacing Inktomi.

In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex from
Silicon Graphics, at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California. The
complex became known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number
one followed by a googol zeroes. Three years later, Google bought the property from SGI
for $319 million. By that time, the name "Google" had found its way into everyday
language, causing the verb "google" to be added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate
Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as: "to use the Google search
engine to obtain information on the Internet.

Google's initial public offering (IPO) took place five years later, on August 19, 2004. At
that time Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for
20 years, until the year 2024. At IPO, the company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of
$85 per share. Shares were sold in an online auction format using a system built by Morgan
Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal. The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google
a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. In October 2006, Google announced that
it had acquired the video-sharing site YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock. On April
13, 2007, Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion,
transferring to Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers
and advertising agencies. In 2005, The Washington Post reported on a 700 percent increase
in third-quarter profit for Google. In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to
Google surpassed one billion for the first time. By 2011, Google was handling
approximately 3 billion searches per day. To handle this workload, Google built 11 data
centers around the world with some several thousand servers in each. These data centers
allowed Google to handle the ever changing workload more efficiently. On August 15,
2011, Google made its largest-ever acquisition to date when it announced that it would
acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. This purchase was made in part to help Google
gain Motorola's considerable patent portfolio on mobile phones and wireless technologies,
to help protect Google in its ongoing patent disputes with other companies, mainly Apple
and Microsoft, and to allow it to continue to freely offer Android.

The year 2012 was the first time that Google generated $50 billion in annual revenue. In
June 2013, Google acquired Waze, a $966 million deal. Google announced the launch of a
new company, called Calico, on September 19, 2013, to be led by Apple Inc. On January
26, 2014, Google announced it had agreed to acquire DeepMind Technologies, a privately
held artificial intelligence company from London. Technology news website Recode
reported that the company was purchased for $400 million though it was not disclosed
where the information came from. According to Interbrand's annual Best Global Brands
report, Google has been the second most valuable brand in the world (behind Apple Inc.)
in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, with a valuation of $133 billion.

On August 10, 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a
conglomerate called Alphabet. Google became Alphabet's leading subsidiary, and will
continue to be the umbrella company for Alphabet's Internet interests. Upon completion of
the restructure, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page, who became
CEO of Alphabet. As of October 2016, Google operates 70 offices in more than 40
countries. Alexa, a company that monitors commercial web traffic, lists Google.com as the
most visited website in the world. Several other Google services also figure in the top 100
most visited websites, including YouTube and Blogger.

On March 19, 2019, Google announced that it would enter the video game market,
launching a cloud gaming platform called Stadia. In December 2019, it was reported that
former PayPal Chief Operating Officer Bill Ready would become Google's new commerce
chief. Ready's role won't be directly involved with Google Pay. In April 2020, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, Google announced several cost-cutting measures. Such measures
included slowing down hiring for the remainder of 2020, except for of a small number of
strategic areas, recalibrating the focus and pace of investments in areas like data centers
and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel.
Challenges faced by Google

As a giant tech company, Google faces many challenges to overcome for the continuous
growth and fame. Followings are the few examples of challenges being faced by Google
over the years:

Deal with the growth of social networking giant Facebook:

Google launched its +1 social affinity feature, but the time it took to make that happen was
awfully long compared to the speed with which Facebook has been revising its platform.
Facebook represents a threat to Google because the bigger the social network grows, the
bigger Google’s blind spot gets (Google can’t search through the data on Facebook’s
platform because it is walled off from the open internet.) That means Google’s search
results won’t be the best at some point.

Circumvent the obstacles that China is throwing in its path:

Google’s revenue has grown in China but not as fast as many Chinese businesses have
grown. But Google claims the Chinese government is slowing down Gmail. Google is also
trying to win the right to continue offering its Google Maps service in China without
handing over its source code to the Chinese government. Rivals such as Baidu are racing
ahead in the meantime.

Stay out of the cross hairs of antitrust regulators around the world:
The European Commission and the Texas attorney general’s office are investigating
Google’s market power. Members of Congress want public hearings on Google’s
competitive practices. A federal judge recently rejected a legal settlement that would have
allowed Google to proceed with its book scanning project. Google Books was reportedly
Page’s pet project, and it’s not going so well. Google has $35 billion in cash. But as
Microsoft learned, cash can disappear pretty quickly once government’s take their share in
antitrust fines.

Catch up with Apple on mobile innovation:

Google has spent a lot of time trying to outwit Microsoft. With its Android mobile
operating system, it has taken on Apple. But even as Android gains market share on
Apple’s iOS mobile operating system, Google frequently trails behind Apple in platform
innovations. It has been far behind Apple in coming up with tablet software and ways for
consumers to buy goods from within an app, which is the primary business model on the
iPhone.

Make Google a good investment in the stock market:

As long as Google is a one-trick pony focused on search/ads, investors won’t reward it
with a rising stock price. And mediocre growth will make it harder to hang on to employees
as well. If things continue this way, Google could wind up like Dell, Forbes said. Google’s
market capitalization is $190.3 billion, while Apple’s is $317.4 billion.

Get people to trust it when it comes to privacy:

Google has made a number of blunders when it comes to privacy, such as capturing Wi-Fi
passwords with its Google Street View vans and paying an $8.5 million settlement over
complaints about how its Buzz social networking tool exposed the names of people with
whom Gmail users regularly communicated. Google has agreed to let the Federal Trade
Commission review its privacy procedures every couple of years. And it seems it still
hasn’t learned. Just last week, CNN wrote about how Google is exploring a service that
allows people to identify faces in a photo. I noted how that was a perfect tool for stalkers.
Google had once put such a project on hold for privacy concerns, but somehow this one’s
been born again. It doesn’t inspire trust.

Hang on to its people in a talent war that is heating up:

Rivals such as Facebook and other hot startups in Silicon Valley are hiring Google
employees who want a chance at striking it rich. Google can’t reward its employees as
richly as companies that are giving out potentially highly valued stock options. This relates
to No. 5. But Google also has to start fun new businesses that make employees want to
stay. At the moment, four of Facebook’s top executives once worked at Google.

Learn how to deal with the news media:

Page is said to have a deep aversion to dealing with the news media. That can work against
Google, as there are plenty of other CEOs who are better at that task and are often willing
to dish mud in Google’s direction. Page is ranked No. 24 on Forbes’ list of billionaires. It’s
pretty hard to have sympathy for such as person. But Page should try harder. He has leaned
on Schmidt for too long in creating a public face for Google. That’s going to take some
emotional intelligence, not just pure brain power.

Fix Google’s public image problems, because where there’s a perception problem,
there’s also a reality problem:
Google should come off as humble and realistic, not arrogant. Schmidt eventually learned
how to speak properly in public without causing a furor on every occasion. When it comes
to Google’s brand name, it has a lot going for it with search, YouTube and Android. But
in too many other attempts, Google has failed to win over consumers. Google has to win
trust and wow its fans over and over again.
Find a huge new business beyond search:
YouTube, AdSense, Google Maps and other big diversifications are starting to generate
good money for Google. But ad revenues from search still dominate the company’s bottom
line.

Leadership Change and Impact on Creativity & Innovation

Throughout the 22 years long journey of Google, it witnessed the leadership of following
great leaders whose contribution made the place where Google stands today. The details
are exhibited as below:

Larry Page (1998 – 2001)

Larry Page is the co-founder and the very first CEO of Google. Along with Sergey Brin,
Page can grab the credit for success of Google as it is now multi-billion-dollar company.
In June 2000, it was announced that Google would become the default search engine
provider for Yahoo!, one of the most popular websites at the time, replacing Inktomi.

Eric Schmidt (2001 – 2011)

After Larry Page stepped down from the role of CEO of Google in 2001, Eric Schmidt took
over. During his tenure as CEO, Google made significant addition to its success story such
as it held its first Initial Public Offering (IPO) in 2004 which created huge funds for Google,
in 2006 it purchased the most popular website for user-submitted streaming videos i.e.
Youtube for $ 1.65 billion.

Larry Page (2011 – 2015)

In 2011, Page again took over the responsibility of CEO for Google. During his tenure for
this time, he was ranked no. 13 on the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America in
2013 and ranked no. 17 on Forbes Most Powerful People list for the same year. Several
acquisition took place in favor of Google in this period such as acquisition of Waze,
DeepMind Technologies etc. The year 2012 was the first time that Google generated $50
billion in annual revenue. Interbrand's annual Best Global Brands report, Google has been
the second most valuable brand in the world (behind Apple Inc.) in 2013, 2014, 2015 and
2016, with a valuation of $133 billion.

Sundar Pichai (2015 – Present)

In 2015, Sundar Pichar, Indian born American computer scientist, became CEO of Google
taking over from Larry Page. Also, Google announced it had become the most powerful
subsidiary of Alphabet in the same year. In 2019, Google was ready to enter the video game
market, launching a cloud gaming platform called Stadia.
Organizational Structure of Google

Google Inc.’s success is linked to the effectiveness of its organizational structure and
organizational culture in supporting excellence in innovation. In theory, a company’s
organizational or corporate structure is the arrangement of components and resources based
on the overall design of the organization. In contrast, a company’s organizational or
corporate culture is the set of beliefs, values, behavioral tendencies, and expectations
among employees. Google’s organizational structure is not conventional because of its
emphasis on flatness. In relation, the company’s organizational culture is also not typical
because it emphasizes change and direct social links within the firm. Theory suggests that
a strong alignment between a firm’s corporate structure and corporate culture can lead to
higher chances of success. This benefit is manifested in the case of Google’s information
technology and Internet services business, which continues to expand in the global
industry. The company’s dominant position is attributable to the synergistic benefits of its
organizational structure and organizational culture.

Google’s organizational structure supports the company’s organizational culture to

maximize innovation. Innovation contributes to the brand image, which is an essential
strength identified in the SWOT analysis of Google Inc. The alignment between the
corporate culture and corporate structure helps develop the company’s competitive
advantages to address strategic challenges linked to multinational firms like Apple,
Amazon.com, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Facebook, Snap Inc. (Snapchat), and Twitter. The
case of Google is an example of aligning and effectively using corporate structure and
corporate culture to achieve strategic objectives in developing competencies for business
growth. This alignment promotes human resource competencies that are essential to
business development toward the fulfillment of Google’s corporate mission and vision
statements.

Google has a cross-functional organizational structure. In essence, this structure is of the

matrix type. However, in this specific business case, the company maintains flatness as a
major factor that influences functions throughout the corporate structure. The following
are the main characteristics of Google’s corporate structure:

 Function-based definition
 Product-based definition
 Flatness

Function-Based Definition:
This structural characteristic refers to grouping of resources and processes based on
business function. For example, Google’s organizational structure involves a group for
Global Marketing, and another group for Finance. An executive heads each of these groups.
This function-based grouping is responsible for organization-wide strategic decisions and
direction. For instance, Google’s operations management approaches are developed and
defined through these function-based groups at the corporate headquarters. This
characteristic of the company’s corporate structure influences business processes, such as
top-down and bottom-up communications, as well as strategic management to solve
problems encountered at various levels and areas of Google’s organization.

Product-Based Definition:
Google’s products are developed through the support of product-based groups in the
company’s corporate structure. This structural feature addresses the need to develop
innovative and competitive products, such as the ones enumerated in Google’s marketing
mix or 4Ps. For example, the company has a group for Cloud operations, and another group
for Artificial Intelligence operations. An executive heads each of these groups. Through
this characteristic of the organizational structure, the business satisfies current and future
market demand and consumer preferences regarding information technology and consumer
electronics products, such as Search, mobile apps, and mobile devices. This ability helps
fulfill Google’s corporate vision and mission statements. The company’s product lines are
aimed at enhancing people’s access to organized information, especially information
through the online environment.

Flatness:
This structural characteristic involves the minimization of vertical hierarchical lines of
communication and authority, despite Google’s function-based groups. For example,
through its flatness, the company’s organizational structure enables employees, teams, and
groups to bypass middle management and communicate directly with upper management.
Also, in this way, Google’s corporate structure facilitates meetings and sharing of
information among employees and teams belonging to different areas of the organization.
This structural feature is a major contributor to innovation for novel products that help in
business diversification, which is among the business strengths outlined in the SWOT
analysis of Google LLC. This characteristic of the organizational structure supports
Google’s corporate social responsibility strategy and stakeholder management, especially
in terms of increasing employee morale, motivation, and satisfaction in their work as part
of the company’s business and long-term success.
Team

The executive team of Google Inc. consists of following 16 executive members along with
CEO Sundar Pichai.

1. Sundar Pichai : Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

2. Catherine Courage : Vice President, Ads, & Commerce User Experience
3. Eve Andersson : Director of Inclusive Machine Learning & Accessibility
Engineering
4. Kent Walker : Senior Vice President of Global Affairs
5. Matt Brittin : President, EMEA Business & Operations
6. Ruth Porat : Senior Vice President & Chief Finance Officer
7. Anil Sabharwal : Vice President, Chrome, Comms and Photos
8. Melonie Parker : Global Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
9. Phillipp Schindler : Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer
10. Lorraine Twohill : Senior Vice President of Global Marketing
11. Thomas Kurian : Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Google Cloud
12. Hiroshi Lockheimer : Senior Vice President of Platforms and Ecosystem
13. Urs Holzle : Senior Vice President of Engineering
14. Jen Fitzpatrick : Vice President of Product and Engineering
15. Rick Osterloh : Senior Vice President of Devices and Services
16. Richard Marks : Director, Technical Project Lead
17. Jade Raymond : Vice President and Head of Stadia Games and
Entertainment