Where Do Google's Best Ideas Come From?
Josh Woodward says the best ideas to come out of labs, and out of Google more broadly, arrive from a variety of places. In his experience they very rarely come from design sprints or from time set aside on a calendar specifically to come up with the next idea.
They usually arrive when people are swimming, in the hallway, maybe on a weekend, or often over a break. Labs teams hack and build because they cannot help themselves, then come back and share a video. The habit is to stay always on alert for something that catches the eye. Good ideas do not come from conventional places, and you cannot microwave them. Sometimes it is less about the idea and more about who the interesting people are.
