Google shares how find your next BIG idea.

I admit I’ve done it. I’ve ignored the amazing feats Google has accomplished over the past 10 years because of Apple’s amazing story.

Google is an innovation machine. They, much like Apple, are constantly pushing and changing the way we look at the world. Google, though, views this process much different from Apple.

Google shares. Google shares a lot. Their belief in sharing led them to create a quarterly online magazine titled Think. The latest edition of this publication is all about innovation. It is lead off by Susan Wojcicki’s article The Eight Pillars of Innovation. I reduced these 8 pillars into 4 core concepts.

These 4 principles can help you to find, develop and grow your ideas into reality.

1. Purpose.

This is the only of Wojicki’s 8 Pillars that is in it’s own category, and it is the ultimate foundation for the other 3. Google has a purpose –

organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful

The Collective has a purpose –

bring life to the business of photography

Your business (and life) has a purpose. You need to define the purpose of your business beyond just making money. Define the why.

2. Share.

Sharing is one of those things we are supposed to learn in Kindergarten.

Sharing may be the most interesting aspect of what Google is built on. Openness is the opposite of what Apple is built on. Google believes innovation can and will happen anywhere. Google knows if they can be the platform for that innovation they will reap benefits.

You can also reap benefits by sharing. The world we live and operate in is a dot compared to what is out there. We need each other and the information we all hold to move our small dot forward.

Find a community you feel comfortable in (here, on another blog, on a forum, in a local or state guild, etc) and share. The more you share the more you will learn.

3. Process.

While we have moments of brilliance, great ideas come over time not over night.

Commit yourself to walking through the process of growing and nurturing your ideas. Also realize that when a dream dies, it may well pop up somewhere else in your journey in a completely different form.

4. Constant.

Developing new ideas for your business needs to be an all-the-time part of what you do. It needs to be built into the fabric of your business cycle.

Google is always looking, sharing and creating. Google hasn’t just built a great search engine and stopped. Google has been on a constant quest to develop ways to organize and share information.

I suggest taking a few minutes to read through the full article at Google Think and a few of these past posts on innovation on The Collective:

• Rick Warren’s 8 Nations of Innovation
• 3 Keys to Innovation
• Innovation through Influence