+ Strategy+Business on "The Google Enigma"

As part of our discussion of family & community, we'll be looking at the effects of technology. Whenever technology comes up, one of the names that's sure to be mentioned is Google. To be sure, they've transformed the way we do business, find and process information, and the radically increased the speed of communication. But, as this article points out, their success isn't as straightforward as it might seem. Furthermore, it can be problematic to look to Google as a way of establishing best practices and takeaways that can be applied to other businesses.

Whenever a company becomes wildly successful in a brief span of time, it naturally becomes an object of fascination for corporate executives and even the general public. More than that, it comes to be presented as a new model for business success. Reporters and scholars scour its history and its practices, looking to distill general lessons for other firms to copy. Google is no exception. Over the last two years, the workings of the company’s “idea factory,” as Business Week describes it, have been dissected in cover stories in all the major business magazines, and business school professors have published studies documenting how the company organizes and manages its product development efforts. In his new book, The Future of Management, London Business School professor Gary Hamel calls Google “a modern management pioneer” that “has much to teach us about how to build companies that are truly fit for the 21st century.”

That’s heady stuff, and it’s hard not to get caught up in the hype. But business executives have at least two reasons to think twice before leaping aboard the Google bandwagon. First, for all its success, Google is still a young company, and it has yet to be tested by adversity. We don’t even know whether its approach to management, and in particular its approach to innovation, is a cause of its success or a product of its success — a crucial distinction. Second, we don’t know how well Google’s example applies to other businesses. Google is certainly a different sort of company, but is it so different as to be anomalous? Is the company an exemplar or a freak?

Read the full article here- free registration is required, but it's certainly worth it.