Guest Post: Google, Platform Thinking and External Innovation

Guest post by Phil Simon

It’s been nearly two and a half years since I penned The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business. Sales wise, the book has entered more or less what Chris Anderson calls the Long Tail. That’s not to say, though, that the companies profiled in the book–and scores of others–have abandoned platform thinking. Far from it.

Let’s look at Google for a moment. Two of its recent moves reveal what many have known for years: the company firmly grasps the importance of involving developers early and often in the launch of a new product.

When the company announced Google Glass (its first foray into wearable tech), co-founder Sergey Brin sought to build a vibrant ecosystem from day one. It may seem odd to some that consumers would have to wait for Glass. Not developers, though. They could purchase it immediately for $1,500 and build apps for it via a robust toolkit.

The rationale here is straightforward. As mobile failures like Microsoft phones and Blackberrys have proven, consumers won’t buy a device (no matter how neat) without indispensable apps. Some early Glass apps like this one might be objectionable, but no one ever said that platforms guarantee only G-Rated innovation. The point is that opening up your products and services to others increases the likelihood that innovation will take place.

Involving developers from the get-go implicitly recognizes that, no matter bright Google’s own engineers and developers are, there are other smart cookies out there. One can see this same mind-set in Google’s Project Ara, a modular smartphone. From a recent Wired piece:

And honestly Ara, at least as a concept, is fantastic. Who wouldn’t want the ability to some day print out new parts for their smartphone at home, expanding its life expectancy to six years and beyond? Google’s willingness to try something so ambitious in public is energizing, particularly in the era of the get-rich-quick smartphone app. Project Ara’s goals could transform the industry, give people greater control over their own devices, and free them from the annual cycles of obsolescence. It’s flexible platform suitable for everyone, everywhere, from every walk of life.

Forget apps for a moment. Think about swapping out hardware and adding entirely new components to existing phones. And what about replacing broken screens? The possibilities are limitless.

No, Ara won’t be hitting the streets in the immediate future. It’s not a stretch to say, though, that it could conceivably end the smartphone upgrade cycle as we know it. Talk about disruptive.

Simon Says

Google is hardly the only large and successful company to embrace platform thinking. For example, GE is starting to outsource innovation to some extent. In words of Steve Liguori, GE’s Executive Director of Global Innovation & New Models, “For all of the smart engineers at GE, we sure don’t have a lock on all of the smart engineers in the world.”

Increasingly, we’re seeing the bifurcation of business. There are those that build platforms and encourage external innovation and those that attempt to do everything in house.

While I can’t predict the future, I’d bet that the former group will be vastly more innovative and successful than the latter. As crowdsourcing platforms like Kickstarter have demonstrated, there’s no shortage of creative and innovative folks out there. Opening up products and services is resulting in some fantastic innovations.

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Bio

Phil Simon is a frequent keynote speaker and recognized technology expert. He is the award-winning author of six management books, including The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions. He consults organizations on matters related to strategy, data, and technology. His contributions have been featured on The Harvard Business Review, CNN, Wired, NBC, CNBC, Inc. Magazine, BusinessWeek, The Huffington Post, Fast Company, The New York Times, ReadWriteWeb and many other sites.

Filed under: Platform Innovation | Topics: Google, innovation, platform economics, platform thinking, platforms