You may have heard that Google is discontinuing support for its Google Wave product. Google Wave, for the uninitiated, is a real-time communication and collaboration tool. It got some initial buzz, and there were a lot of discussions about how it could be used in newsrooms. Google hyped it as a replacement for email. I played with it and although I found it a little confusing, I saw some potential.
Back in September 2009, I wrote in the AR&D Newsletter: “Imagine starting a wave in your office about a news topic. People can constantly add to it, putting in the latest pictures, video and information. The assignment desk can contribute its findings and the reporters and producers have instant access, as well as the ability to add more. We don’t yet know how newsrooms can fully take advantage of this tool (and isn’t that wonderful?) but we do believe it will be a powerful way to have the entire staff work together.”
I was wrong. Google Wave didn’t catch on. Lots of people tried one “wave,” but did little else. I think part of the problem may have been that Google didn’t do a good enough job educating people on how to use the tool. But here’s the thing: I love experimental failure. I love when companies take a risk on something different. I love learning from your mistakes. Google does, too.
CEO Eric Schmidt says the company is going to take some of the core technology behind Google Wave and apply it to a different product. Terrific. The company put out a beta product, found it didn’t draw enough people, and it will iterate something else.
Schmidt told GigaOm: “It’s absolutely OK to try something very hard, have it not be successful, take the learning from that and then apply it to something new.”
Online, the barriers to entry are very low. You can launch all sorts of initiatives and simply see how they go. Don’t think of these undertakings as “taking away from our time.” They’re not. They are part of what you should be doing. Innovation was once the purview of the communications industry. Now we’re waiting for other people to innovate for us. How has that worked out so far? Try. Fail. Try again.
I love this quote attributed to Thomas Edison: “I have not failed. I have found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” (The quote may be apocryphal or it may have changed over the years. That doesn’t change its utility one bit.) Reward innovation and even reward a good failure.