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(P.S. Testing of "OK Google")
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“Our policy is we try things. We celebrate our failures. This is a company where it’s absolutely OK to try something that is very hard, have it not be successful, take the learning and apply it to something new.

-Eric Schmidt on Google Wave

As part of the London Student Ambassador program, this Wednesday I’ve got the chance to visit my dream work place-Google UK.

I was quite impressed by the quirky design of the office as well as its relaxing working atmosphere. The four coolest I found during the visit was the free food, flexible working hour positivity and what they call “a license to purse passions”.

Free food- Freshly made dishes and refreshments are all free at Google. You can get it in the canteen (see the picture below) which offers a nice view of central London or you can get it in those small kitchens.

Flexible working hour-At Google, there’s no strict rules about working hours although in the contract it does say “from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.” as one of the staff told me. However, in most times, they can manage the time by their own as long as they finish the work on time.

Positivity- At the idea generation stage of every project, you are not allowed to say “No. But…”. Instead, you have to say every following sentence with “Yes. And…”. This encourages everyone to think quickly and try to find every possible solution to the problem.

A license to purse passions-Every engineer at Google will be given 20% of their working time to do the project that they are passionate about.That could be mobile, charity, sport, etc. (They also call this “20% project”.) If someone has got a project in mind, they can share it with Google’s internal network “Google ideas” and get support from Google engineers around the world. They will also be given time and resources to work on the project. Some of Google’s famous products, such as Google News, Gmail, are actually from these “20% projects”.

Besides, the whole office is like a cosy home with sofas and small relaxing rooms everywhere. This really encourages you to enjoy the job as much as possible. There’s even a room for your lovely dogs so you can bring your dogs while you are working.

9 notions of innovation at Google:
- Innovation is everything
- Ideas come from everywhere
- Fail quickly and learn
- Allow ideas to morph
- Creativity loves constraint
- Share everything
- Data informs decision-making
- Users come first
- A license to pursue passions
Listen to the talk about 9 notions of innovation at Goolge
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