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In its journey through time, every company has to ensure that it grows by promoting consistent change through innovation. Innovation and the consequent change is a definitive way for a company to maintain a competitive edge over its competitors. For a company such as Google, innovation is not only beneficial, but also essential for survival. The company has to ensure that they can anticipate the needs of their customer base and encourage innovation to fulfil these needs. Google in its present form benefits tremendously from staying ahead in the game — thus, making innovation the core principle in every way possible.

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Google was the brain child of Larry Page and Sergey Brin — both Stanford students. Google’s inception in its earliest was in 1995. In 1996 Larry and Sergey began work on a search engine called BackRub. This engine worked on the Stanford servers for more than a year which eventually clogged up the bandwidth. Google.com was registered on September 15th, 1997. Google, is a play on words of "googol" which is a mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. It is rumoured that this reflects the founders' mission to organize the infinite amount of information on the internet. In August of 1998 Sun co-founder, Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a check for $100,000 to the yet non-existent company Google Inc. They formally incorporated their company, Google, on September 4, 1998 in their friend Susan Wojcicki's garage in Menlo Park, California. Wojcicki eventually became an executive at Google and is now the CEO at YouTube. In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology start-ups. After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company moved into a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 2003. The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex.

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Some innovations have become so fundamental to our existence and daily life that it is difficult to imagine a day when it was not present. Google is one of such innovations of the 21st century. For a company that is so integral to the modern millennial life it is essential that they innovate promptly and consistently. Therefore, a dedicated innovation policy also becomes central to the company’s growth strategy.

The Google innovation policy states:

Have a Mission that Matters

Google’s mission is to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ We use this simple statement to guide all of our decisions. For example, Gmail was created to address the need for more web email functionality, great search and more storage.

Think Big but Start Small

No matter how ambitious the plan, you have to roll up your sleeves and start somewhere. Google Books, which has brought the content of millions of books online, was an idea that our founder, Larry Page, had for a long time. People thought it was too crazy even to try, but he went ahead and bought a scanner and hooked it up in his office.

Strive for Continual Innovation, not Instant Perfection

Watching users ‘in the wild’ as they use our products is the best way to find out what works, then we can act on that feedback. The first version of AdWords, released in 1999, was not very successful – almost no one clicked on the ads. Not many people remember that because we kept iterating and eventually reached the model we have today.

Look for Ideas Everywhere

Some of the best ideas at Google are sparked when small groups of Googlers take a break on a random afternoon and start talking about things that excite them. The Google Art Project, which brought thousands of museum works online, and successful AdWords features like Automated Rules, are great examples of projects that started out in our ‘microkitchens.’

Share Everything

Our employees know pretty much everything that’s going on and why decisions are made. By sharing everything, you encourage the discussion, exchange and re-interpretation of ideas, which can lead to unexpected and innovative outcomes. The idea for language translation in Google Talk came out of conversations between the Google Talk and Google Translate teams when they happened to be working near one another.

Spark with Imagination, Fuel with Data

In our fast-evolving market, it is hard for people to know, or even imagine, what they want. We try to encourage this type of blue-sky thinking through ‘20 percent time’ – a full day a week during which engineers can work on whatever they want. Looking back at our launch calendar over a recent six-month period, we found that many products started life in employees’ 20 percent time.

Be a Platform

There is so much awe-inspiring innovation being driven by people all over the globe. That is why we believe so strongly in the power of open technologies. Google Earth, for example, allows developers to build ‘layers’ on top of our maps and share them with the world.

Never Fail to Fail

Google is known for YouTube, not Google Video Player. The thing is, people remember your hits more than your misses. It is okay to fail as long as you learn from your mistakes and correct them fast. Knowing that it is okay to fail can free you up to take risks. Moreover, the tech industry is so dynamic that the moment you stop taking risks is the moment you are left behind.

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"We just need to continue to say ‘yes’ and resist a culture of ‘no’, accept the inevitability of failures, and continue iterating until we get things right. "

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Google has come to a stage where its size go become a bane. The company is at the point in its history where it needs to redefine itself. Google will have to admit that to grow as a company they will have to go beyond their present roles and ensure that they reinvent technology online and in the real world. Their best option would be to use their might and influence to help smaller projects across the globe and grow the company through them. They will have to rediscover their work culture and focus on enabling smaller teams to push their innovative streak further. For a company that has revolutionised the entire online realm in just two decades, it is important to remember that magic began in a dorm room between two inquisitive geniuses looking to change the world — corporate board rooms might deter that every organic essence of stumbling over groundbreaking ideas.

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Google has been accused of becoming more competitor-focused rather than consumer-focused. There main challenges can be identified as:

-          Google can't reduce its scope: Google is omnipotent and therefore to remain in the lead it has to compete with companies across the world from different sectors such as social media, mobile software, and even smart gadgets.

-          Google's services need to support every platform: Google products have to be compatible with devices across the board — they need to support every community that Google is in world-wide. Thus, teams are slowed down because they would need to make sure their products tested well in every language around the world.

Google struggles outside their comfort zone: Google created or acquired a remarkable string of hit products during the 2000s, including Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, YouTube, Android, and Chrome. During the 2010s, Google funded a series of “moonshots” that aim to solve big technology problems far removed from the company’s traditional focus on online services. Google has had little to show for these efforts. Google Glass was a flop. The company has developed some impressive self-driving technology but has still not turned it into a commercial product.

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Berkhout, G., Hartmann, D., & Trott, P. (2010). Connecting technological capabilities with market needs using a cyclic innovation model. R&d Management, 40(5), 474-490.

Lee, T. B. (2016, December). How Amazon innovates in ways that Google and Apple can't. Retrieved March 2019, from Vox News: https://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/12/28/13889840/amazon-innovation-google-apple

Wojcicki, S. (2011, July). The Eight Pillars of Innovation. Retrieved March 2019, from Think with Google: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/8-pillars-of-innovation/

Zawislak, P. A., Alves, A. C., J. T.-G., Barbieux, D., & Reichert, F. M. (2012). Innovation Capability: From Technology Development to Transaction Capability. Journal of Technology Management & Innovation, 7(2), 14-27.