According to Eric Schmidt and his team, something is considered innovative, if it is really new, surprising, and extremely useful.

 

Google has a simple Venn diagram, which is used to determine if they are pursuing an idea.

• First, the idea has to be something related to a big challenge or opportunity, something that affects a lot of people. (Affect)
• Second, they must have an idea for a solution that is completely different from what is currently on the market. They don’t want to try to improve upon an existing method. More than that, they want to start over. (Innovative)
• And thirdly, such breakthrough advances must be Feasible and achievable in the not too far future. (Feasible)

 

That’s the set of 3: Affect + Innovative + Feasible

 

 

Example: It could be the project “Create self-driving cars”. Or, more closely, Gmail. Google engineer Paul Buchheit developed Gmail with one idea in mind: Create a Web-based email system with a rich feature set and user interface like client-based email. That’s it, but the number of people using Gmail daily has reached 1.8 billion people.

 

 

Although the resources of most of us are not as much as Google has, the above approach suggests us how to evaluate and choose a product properly, before we spend most of our precious resources on it.

 

 

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NEVILL NGUYEN

Solution Architect & CEO

PowerGate Software

A Global Software Product Studio