To kick of the second full day at LSA16 in San Francisco, Google’s Ben Wood, director of channel sales Americas, explained how the company thinks about and facilitates innovation. He gave a behind the scenes look at how innovation permeates the company’s culture and product development.

He talked about how there are no cliché posters and signs of sunsets with motivational messages hanging on the walls of Google offices. He said that if you asked 10 different employees what innovation meant, you would get 10 different answers. This variation in perspectives is precisely what Google wants from their employees.

“We believe we’ve created an environment where innovation is encouraged and innovation is celebrated,” Ben said.

Ben distilled the company’s emphasis on innovation into three principles: Focus on the user (target audience), freedom and “10X Thinking.” Ben explained how these principles aren’t only applicable to Google and its employees, but can be integrated into any company’s thinking.

Here is how Ben talked about each of these principles:

Focus on User

• The user or target audience must come first, last and always, which is foundational to innovation and precisely how Google and its various lines of business function.
• Focusing on the user is so important because this gives everyone direction.
• Users have high expectations. As an example, Ben talked about Wi-Fi on a plane was once and amazing new technology and now it is expected.
• At Google they take an “it’s our problem” mentality to user problems. For example, the company felt the web was too slow, and responded to that issue with Google Chrome.

Freedom

• Google wants to give employees as much freedom as possible with an objective to create an environment where those who want to innovate can, and those who want to join them can.
• Ben talked about the company’s “20% time” program which is more like 120%. The program is about freedom for employees to work on a project of their own choosing.
• The important points around the initiative is that it isn’t tracked, has no separate bonus pool and no formal process.
• The program instead celebrates people who create their own projects, build prototypes and show it to people.

10X Thinking

• People are mostly afraid to take chances and this is especially true in bigger companies. To combat this, Google leadership and culture encourages people to take chances.
• Improving 10% vs. 10X facilitate two very different ways of thinking. 10X has become a verb around Google: “How am I going to 10X that?”
• Google has also found that the 10X thinking initiative is a great way to attract and retain top talent because the brightest people are usually drawn to the toughest challenges.