Libor Bešenyi (Technical Director)

Let’s have look at a few quotes from the Czech version of the book ‘What Would Google Do’(original) with regard to business or the actual products.

Business

We must accept a certain level of failure of innovations:

… I want to lead a company where we push things forward way too fast, where we do too much and we are not careful and we don’t do too little. (Larry Page)

„… when customers do a search for you on Google, you’d better be prepared to answer all their questions on your web pages, even before they ask the questions. If customers talk about you in public, you’d better listen to them so that you are able to answer them immediately.“

„Avoid any strategy based on protection against dissection of the main business, as it most probably means that the cannibals are the door, ready to eat you for lunch.“

„Secured cash flow may prevent you from understanding the strategic inevitability of change, hard decisions and innovation.“

„Google’s experience is clear. Your business is innovation, otherwise you’re out of the game. Innovation comes from intelligence and freedom.“

„If you really want to change, you need a new type of clients.“

„Both Google and Apple make their money by giving away the key part of their work for free and then they make money on something else.“

„The companies way too often think that all they do has a value that must be recorded, charged, changed into money, preserved, confined and protected.“

The customers help the company, however, the business decisions don’t belong to them: „…your work is to come up with new and good ideas, create, inspire, surprise and implement. Companies are not democracies.“

Product

We always make mistakes, everyday, but if you launch your products and implement your iterations very quickly, people will forget your mistakes and they will respect the way how you’re able to develop and improve the product. (Mayer)

“…enable others to use this tool as they wish.”

“Beta version is Google’s way to express an attitude. There will surely be some bugs, so please help us find them, fix them and help improve the whole product. Tell us, what you want the product to be like.”

“Simply launch the product and let the users talk about the most significant defects you should concentrate your time and energy on.”

 “Cooperation with customers is the highest and the most beneficial form of interactive activity, as the public tells you, what they want to have in the product before you finish it. If you are lucky, they will consider the product you create together their own. Not only will they buy it, they will brag about it wherever they go.”

“…founders of Google approach innovations in the following order: First find the problem, then create the solution. Avoid ideas from "fantastic" category."

“Google realises that its real value is not in limiting what people can do, but in helping them to do whatever they can imagine.”