The Google Way: How One Company is Revolutionizing Management as We Know it

Front Cover
No Starch Press, 2009 - Business & Economics - 256 pages

Shortly after World War I, Ford and GM created the large modern corporation, with its financial and statistical controls, mass production, and assembly lines. In the 1980s, Toyota stood out for combining quality with continuous refinement. Today, Google is reinventing business yet again-the way we work, how organizations are controlled, and how employees are managed.

Management consultant Bernard Girard has been analyzing Google since its founding in 1998, and now in The Google Way, he explores Google's innovations in depth-many of which are far removed from the best practices taught at the top business schools.

As you read, you'll see how much of Google's success is due to its focus on users and automation. You'll also learn how eCommerce has profoundly changed the relationship between businesses and their customers, for the first time giving customers an important role to play in a major corporation's growth. Finally, Girard speculates about the limits of Google's business model and discusses the challenges it will face as it continues to grow.

Google's culture is one of innovation. Why not make that spirit of innovation your own?

From inside the book

Contents

A Management Breakthrough
1
An Unorthodox Corporate Saga
5
A Formula 1 Engine
43
Put Users First the Rest Will Follow
131
Challenges and Risks
161
A Model for All Managers?
223
Notes
229
Index
239
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

Bernard Girard is the author of several books on management and has consulted for some of the world's best-known firms. He lectures globally on Google's management strategies and ways they can be applied to businesses of all kinds.

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