One company stands out as most impressive in the world right now for its way of thinking. Not for its achievements today (although hugely influential), but for the impact its way of thinking will have on our collective futures.That company is Google.
“The story of innovation has not changed. It has always been a small team of people who have a new idea, typically not understood by people around them and their executives.”
—Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google
Google doesn’t have a secret formula, but we have distilled our thinking into a set of basic principles—ideas we believe can be adapted and applied at pretty much any organization, regardless of size or industry. One of the principles of innovation applied inside Google is 10X thinking.
-—Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google
The notion of “10x thinking” is at the heart of innovation at Google. To put the idea simply: true innovation happens when you try to improve something by 10 times rather than by 10%.This is the guiding inspiration for engineers at Google[x]—the division of Google that focuses on producing major technological advances such as self-driving cars. Ever since Google started the self-driving car project, they have been working toward the goal of vehicles that can shoulder the entire burden of driving .Building a prototype vehicle that's designed to take you where you want to go at the push of a button—no driving required.
A 10x goal forces you to rethink an idea entirely. It pushes you beyond existing models and forces you to totally imagine how to approach it.