Lecture

Give Ideas Credit, Not Credit for Ideas

Both the enterprise and the end users are better served by a culture that revolves around rewarding great ideas, rather than the self-promotion of getting others to acknowledge the contributions of an individual. Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience at Google, believes that if you fill a room with smart people and give them access to information, brilliant ideas will flourish, and the need for a strict management hierarchy dissolves. A platform for the free-form sharing of ideas promotes an open culture and a flat organization.


Course Lectures
  • Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, believes that ideas for new products come from everywhere - every employee, every department, from both necessity and serendipity. By creating an environment where ideas can be freely exercised, like a muscle they will likely get more toned and more in tune with the organization's circulation.

  • Both the enterprise and the end users are better served by a culture that revolves around rewarding great ideas, rather than the self-promotion of getting others to acknowledge the contributions of an individual. Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience at Google, believes that if you fill a room with smart people and give them access to information, brilliant ideas will flourish, and the need for a strict management hierarchy dissolves. A platform for the free-form sharing of ideas promotes an open culture and a flat organization.

  • Work with Smart People
    Marissa Mayer

    Challenge yourself against better players and you'll become star of the team.Google's Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, Marissa Mayer, reflects upon her personal experience working with some of the finest talent in hi-tech - and points out that working with the best empowers each player to excel.

  • License to Pursue Dreams
    Marissa Mayer

    Passion and momentum build when skilled employees have access to great tools and the time to stretch them in new directions. Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience at Google, discusses the groundbreaking company practice of setting aside 20 percent of an employee's time for creative projects. By her own assessment, nearly half of the company's most recent launches came from ideas sparked during this unstructured time.

  • Learning From Mistakes
    Marissa Mayer

    Madonna had The Sex Book. Apple had the Newton. Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience for Google, points out that all the best brands, including her own, have made some tremendous product errors. But what allows an enterprise to endure, she says, is its ability to learn from its mistakes and make corrections. Performance is what's important, even if it's not instantaneous.

  • Data is Apolitical
    Marissa Mayer

    Product decisions can be based on the company politics.But one cannot argue with facts and stats, and this is the basis, says Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, by which the company bases its decisions. Google's approach is the take the guesswork out of product design, from functionality to shades of color, and they believe in the science of well-monitored and frequent A/B testing.

  • In product development, Google's Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, believes that a small amount of constraint - whether in file size, pixels, or speed - fosters a lot of innovation. The lesson she shares? Too much creative freedom can make creativity unfocused. A solution with a strict set of barriers yields more concrete solutions.

  • Bank Users, Not Money
    Marissa Mayer

    Google has proven that if you build it, they will come, and their mass of tools to keep users logged in has been the crux of their success. Vice President of Search Products & User Experience Marissa Mayer elaborates on this strategy, pointing out that money - and advertisers - will always follow consumers. Focus on building sticky media that draws in a wide audience, and the method to its monetization will follow.

  • Repackage, rejuvenate, re-market, and re-examine those products or practices you thought would fly, and craft them a new set of wings. Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, Marissa Mayer lives by the old adage that if at first you don't succeed, try again. She pushes aspiring business thinkers to breathe new life into failed ventures, as opposed to cutting the cord.

  • Surviving the Bubble
    Marissa Mayer

    Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, says that when people visit their corporate offices, they feel as if the dotcom bubble never burst. But what differentiates Google from all of the other defunct dotcom's? Profitability. This critical differentiation is the obvious and most basic capability of the company's success.