Google X: Can you create a moonshot factory?

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Google X, now known as X, is not to be confused with X.com, which was formerly known as Twitter. Google X has been an internal business unit at Google since 2010. Whew, now we have that out of the way, let’s get down to it.

The stated mission of Google X is “To have 10x impact on the world’s biggest problems.” In other words, “We only do moonshots here.”

Pretty big talk, but can they back it up? I don’t think so.

For all the billions spent by Google X, let’s give it credit for Waymo, a pioneer in self-driving cars. Credit for staying with it and getting it to the point of commercial testing. We are still a long way from Waymo changing the world.

Most everything else at Google X sounds cool, but things have gone nowhere.

How can this be? Everybody I know from Google is smart, competent, and interesting. There are three fundamental reasons for why Google X has not been successful at building a moonshot factory.

First, remember we talked about the crazy person in the post about why Elon Musk has been successful at SpaceX? When we look at Google X, where is the dedicated founder who will sacrifice anything to make the venture successful? Nowhere. Google X is a business unit buried inside one of the world’s most successful companies.

Second, leadership at Google X celebrates failure. Really? One of the oldest management exercises is to encourage people to analyze why things fail so they can learn from the experience and do better next time. Google X goes one step farther and evangelizes failure and publicizes how many projects they shut down every year. Pay close attention here, one of the projects that was killed was teleportation – like “Beam me up Scotty,” from Star Trek.

Third, most importantly, the brilliant young people who work at Google X have career options. If their Google X project is “killed,” they move to another Google X project, another job inside Google, or a new job at another prestigious technology company. Their work is a job, not an obsession. They are not maniacal about the project and can shrug and walk away without any consequences.

Going back to the Menlo Park, NJ lab of Thomas Edison where there were also many projects going on simultaneously, why did Edison’s shop produce over 1,000 patents while Google X has struggled to break through?

Edison was the crazy guy that Google X does not have. He was smart and ultra-competitive. He pushed his teams of scientists, machinists, and others to get things done. Edison slept less than four hours a night. In his words, “sleep was a waste of time.”

Key Takeaways

1. Be sure you have the fire in the belly and are willing to see things through in any startup. Dipping a toe in the water is a prescription for failure.

2. Skip the big talk. Look up Stealth Mode and try it when starting a venture. In other words, keep your mouth shut until you really have something.

3. Don’t name your company “X,” unless you want to get in a brawl with a few billionaires over copyright and trademark law.

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