Why have Larry Page and Sergey Brin produced the Alphabet rabbit out of the hat? They had no choice ( and some rabbits)
There are personal reasons such as this one quoted: Ever since Page returned to the CEO role at Google in 2011, he has been debating possible changes to the organizational structure that would allow him to maintain broad control of the business he created while nonetheless giving him more freedom to pursue new ventures.
There maybe more reasons but certainly a ‘business logic’. This has mainly to do with allowing the co-existence of completely different ideas/business/incubators under one roof without contaminating Google Granddad. If you play with longevity, drones, spectacles, tiny satellites, cars and a couple of venture capital engines, you need a supermarket, not a single shop. You need a host to keep those tracks going independently. Sort of.
It’s inevitable, it’s smart, it’s logic. All of the above. But, even more important, it’s inevitable in the modern organization, in the Battle for Ideas (with cash). Alphabet may be a formal company and trading as such, but it’s not a company in the traditional way. It’s a Platform (of ideas, experiments, plays, risky businesses, crazy brains and bets, lots of bets, as in Alfa-Bet, exactly.
Its not semantics. A platform is an operating system that is blind to what it may host. It allows for different rooms with different decorations and different inmates. Its exactly what we call in our Remarkable Organization work ‘Co-habitation’. The pace of change (forgive me the platitude) will make more and more impossible to run monolithic, one brand, one track companies. There will be more and more co-existence (‘co-habitation’) of different business models differ life cycles, different beasts under one roof. Corporate is Mother Host. A platform.
I am not talking about hosting products and brands, what’s new? But about Lego-lizing your business and giving each piece a life of its own, whilst still being in charge of the Lego box
So why have Larry Page and Sergey Brin produced the Alphabet rabbit out of the hat? Because they have rabbits and hats, and because this is the only thing they could do when you put aside traditional management thinking and look for logic outside all boxes. Ah, forgot, and you have a bit of cash.
I bet on that alpha. Watch the management (thinking) arena. Small detail: ‘don’t try this at home’ without rethinking your leadership style. It cant be run with old toolkits.
Nice analysis. I think you’ve captured what’s really going on here, whether or not the Google-meisters think of it this way. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.