Amit Singh

Move at the Pace of 100% Web

What company is better than Google to discuss innovation?

Exhorting everyone to "say yes and fail well—just do it fast, because speed is everything, "Amit Singh made the case for connectivity and the power of the cloud. Being "100% Web" frees a company to do amazing things.

Singh said, "We live in interesting times: everyone is connected and mobile, using the Internet as the service platform. Consumers are leveraging new technologies in their everyday lives, and companies that can't adapt are being left behind. New winners and losers are emerging." For example:

• It took Netflix four years to get 3.3 million subscribers; now, the company has added that many in the most recent business quarter. Currently, more than 3 million are "streaming" content. Blockbuster collapsed.
• This month, with sales of $90 million, electronic books beat paperbacks. In 2011, e-books were a billion dollar industry. Borders is going through liquidation.
• Eighteen months ago, Groupon didn't exist; now the enterprise is bringing in $4 billion in revenue and anticipating an IPO with a 30 billion market cap. Yellow Pages could never connect its business model with the Internet to deliver a brand new business strategy.

What are the principles Google uses to innovate?

• Focus on the user. "We're maniacal about the user; everything we do has the end-user in mind."
• Experiment with data. "Google is a computer science company. We send new ideas out to millions of users, get their feedback, and push back out. When we look at what people search for, there's a huge amount of data; we just need to find a way to make sense of it all. We make data mining tools available to companies."
• Ideas come from everywhere. "Free 20 percent of your employee's time to focus on whatever they are interested in. It's chaos, but that chaos fuels creativity. Give your customers license to do what they want, and they'll weave you into the fabric of their lives."
• Speed matters. In fact, more than anything else. "In an experiment, we increased search times by 400 milliseconds. Our search queries dropped ½ percent. Amazon did similar study, adding 100 milliseconds, and saw a drop in revenue."

The final secret to success: "Hire the right people, give them the time and money to create, and then just get out of their way. Impossible things are possible."

Download the presentation [PDF, 3MB]

Amit Singh Vice President, Global Sales and Business Development, Enterprise, Google Amit Singh leads global sales and business development for Google's Enterprise business with responsibility for the Americas, EMEA, APAC and Japan. He joined Google in 2010 after nearly 20 years at Oracle in different areas of the business, including product development, channel management, sales, strategy and acquisitions. In his most recent role, as group vice president, he led the Application Strategy Group, responsible for applications acquisitions, shared services and product strategy for North American Sales. He also ran sales and operations for some of the fastest growing acquisitions at Oracle including Demantra, G-Log, Agile, Logical Apps and Peoplesoft HR. Mr. Singh spent a decade in various sales positions managing Applications sales organizations in the Northeast and Midwest. He began his Oracle career in product development, designing and building some of the first Oracle Applications, before moving into channel management.