Chaos by design by Adam Lashinsky:
Sandberg recently committed an error that cost Google several million dollars — “Bad decision, moved too quickly, no controls in place, wasted some money,” is all she’ll say about it — and when she realized the magnitude of her mistake, she walked across the street to inform Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and unofficial thought leader. “God, I feel really bad about this,” Sandberg told Page, who accepted her apology. But as she turned to leave, Page said something that surprised her. “I’m so glad you made this mistake,” he said. “Because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don’t have any of these mistakes, we’re just not taking enough risk.”
A bit unconventional: and not right for every business. But for Google this makes sense to me, and it has been working well for them. Google hired Shona Brown, as senior vice president for business operations in 2003. In 1998 she authored – Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos.
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yeah i think risk factor is always associated with innovation either its breakthrough or incremental,process or product innnovation and moreover in a company like google which gives special importance to its people and allows them to experiment and prove themselves different from others.
Hadn’t seen this little tidbit before, but it truly resonates. Personally, I like the concept as it sort of fits into the paradigm of “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask permission”. Well, maybe it fits into that! Either way, as long as the “mistake” isn’t taking food off of the table it’s “dealable”?
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