Google seems to be the top choice for measuring up when it comes to innovation. This April, a number of magazines analyze the makeup of Google and its success factors.  In the blogosphere, Google’s innovation recipe (written by consultaglobal.com) gave a great summary of Harvard Business Review’s article (Reverse engineering Google’s innovation machine), and FastCompany’s article (The Faces and voices of the world’s most innovative company). 

I read with interest from Portfolio (Search Mission by Russ Mitchell, April 2008 Issue) that Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page chose a CEO in 2001, Dr. Eric Schmidt, who had previously worked in Sun Microsystems.  While Yahoo, in the same year, chose a CEO who is a Hollywood insider. Since 2001, there are dramatic differences in the performance and culture of the 2 companies with Google’s $5.7B profit in 2007 dominating the online advertisement world, and Yahoo now fighting a hostile takeover from Microsoft.

Goolge CEO’s training and background surely lend itself to the Google’s innovation fabric. 

Recently at a Video 2.0 Meetup meeting in NYC, I was impressed with Sun’s innovative spirit, they continue to be interesting and contributing to the open source community.  Google’s CEO must have grown up with good old-fashioned structured processes and methodologies.

In the face of hypes and trends, sound management practice counts.  Engineering best practice is the balancing act to disruptive product strategy and technology.