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Table of Content
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 7 Overview of Ten Principles of War .................................................................................. 8 Overview of the Selected Organization .......................................................................... 10 1
Selection and Maintenance of the Aim ................................................................... 11
2
Sustenance/ Maintenance of Morale ....................................................................... 13
3
Need for Offensive Action ........................................................................................ 16
4
Element of Surprise in Action ................................................................................. 20
5
Security of the Troops .............................................................................................. 22
6
Concentration of Force ............................................................................................ 24
7
Economy of Effort .................................................................................................... 26
8
Mental and Physical Flexibility of the Troops ....................................................... 28
9
Co-Operation ............................................................................................................ 31
10 Administration and Logistics .................................................................................. 34 Limitations of the Principles of War .............................................................................. 36 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 37 References ......................................................................................................................... 38
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Logo of Google Corporation .............................................................................. 7 Figure 2: Application of Principles of War on Business Perspective .................................. 9 Figure 3: Key Leaders of the Organization........................................................................ 13 Figure 4: Library Facilities at Google ................................................................................ 14 Figure 5: Training and Office Facility ............................................................................... 15 Figure 6: Web Browser Market Share ............................................................................... 17 Figure 7: Web Mail Market share ...................................................................................... 17 Figure 8: Google Android Platform Logo ......................................................................... 17 Figure 9: Logo of Google Coming up Chrome OS............................................................ 19 Figure 10: Prototypes of a future product Design by Google ............................................ 19 Figure 11: Logo of the Google Chrome Web Browser...................................................... 20 Figure 12: Logo of the Google Buzz Service .................................................................... 21 Figure 13: User Interface Snapshot of the Google Chrome Operating System ............... 21 Figure 14: Google Android Platform Logo ....................................................................... 21 Figure 15: Internet Search Market Share ........................................................................... 22 Figure 16: Google First Server Computer and New Server Computer .............................. 24 Figure 17: Logos of You Tube, Double Click and Picasa ................................................. 25 Figure 18: Mobile Platform Market Share ......................................................................... 26 Figure 19: Google Web Page, Simple and Efficient .......................................................... 27 Figure 20: Relaxed Working Environment ........................................................................ 29 Figure 21: Employees Enjoying the Google Facilities ...................................................... 30 Figure 22: Group Meetings and Discussions ..................................................................... 31 Figure 23: Relax ash Sharing Thoughts ............................................................................. 32 Figure 24: Equipment Repair Store at Office .................................................................... 34 Figure 25: Free Food at Office........................................................................................... 34 Figure 26: Office with Full Equipments ............................................................................ 34
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Introduction
Assignment Objectives Understand the Ten Principles of War. Study the Activities of a Business Organization. Identify how the principles of war are Applied in the Business Environment.
Context of the Assignment This document discusses the ten principles of war on business perspective and its application toward business organization. World top class company, Google has been selected as the organization to be
Figure 1: Logo of Google Corporation [Source: (Wikipedia, 2010)]
evaluated in term of principles of war applications. The ten principles of war namely Selection and Maintenance of the Aim, Sustenance of Morale, Need for Offensive Action, Element of Surprise in Action, Security of the Troops, Concentration of Force, Economy of Effort, Mental and physical Flexibility of the troops, Co-operation, Administration and Logistics are discussed one after the other. Examples are provided to support the arguments where necessary. One main reason to select Google as the base company is the availability of information. As a result of being a famous company in the world, most of the strategies taken by the top management are available in many internet sources as literature.
Methodology The data has been collected through Web Sites, Published Journals, Business Reports, Corporate Sites, Government Publications and Other documents available on the internet. No field visits has been done in order to collect data. However, gathered data were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative methods.
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Overview of Ten Principles of War The principles of war were originally proposed in the famous essay called ‘principles of war’ by Carl Von Clausewits. Later the principles of war were published as a book, ‘On War’. Since the introduction of the principles, many armies have used it during different war time as a tool on strategic decision making. With the time goes on, different armies try to make their own variations to the original principles. Later it was ended up with quite different number of principle sets. Basically the differences can be considered as national variations. Each military prioritize the principles according to their own evaluation and experience by the military leaders and trainers. This documentation mainly concentrates on ten principles of war which currently used by British armies. The British army’s started to teach these principles on their armies since the end of First World War. Most of the countries currently using 9 principles of war However, British army has added the tenth principle called ‘Administration And Logistics’ to the list at later stage. The commonwealth countries are also use the same set of principles of war during the army trainings. The British army comments on the importance and the usage of ten principles war as follows, “…Principles of War guide commanders and their staffs in the planning and conduct of warfare. They are enduring, but not immutable, absolute or prescriptive, and provide an appropriate foundation for all military activity. The relative importance of each may vary according to context; their application requires judgement, common sense and intelligent interpretation. Commanders also need to take into account the legitimacy of their actions, based on the legal, moral, political, diplomatic and ethical propriety of the conduct of military forces, once committed…” (JointDoctrine, 2008) The following table shows the minor differences of the ‘Principles Of War’ followed by different armies in different countries. All the definitions are extracted from the 2008 edition of British Defence Doctrine documentation as well as the academic note provided by the lecturer under Decision Making Module.
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Great Britain Australia
1.
Objective
Selection & Maintenance of Aim
Selection & Maintenance of Aim
2.
Offensive
Offensive Action
Offensive Action
3.
Mass
Concentration of Force
Massing & Correlation of Forces
4.
Economy of Force
Economy of Force
Economy, Sufficiency of Force
5.
Maneuver
Flexibility
Initiative
6.
Unity of Command
Cooperation
Coordination
7.
Security
Security
Security
8.
Surprise
Surprise
Surprise
Maintenance of Morale
Mobility & Tempo, Simultaneous Attack on All Levels, Preservation of Combat Effectiveness, Interworking & Coordination
9.
Simplicity
10.
Former Soviet Union
France
Concentration of Effort
China
Concentration of Force
Initiative & Flexibility
Surprise
Surprise
Liberty of Action
Morale, Mobility, Political Mobilization, Freedom of Action
Admin and Logistics Table 1: Comparison on Principles of War [Source: (JFSC, 1955)]
The following illustration visualise the objective of the assignment. The document has discussed the each and every principle and explains it from the business perspective.
Figure 2: Application of Principles of War on Business Perspective
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Overview of the Selected Organization Google, the search engine giant who dominates the internet search was born in 4th September 1998. The core founders of the Google Corporation Sergey M. Brin and Lawrence E. Page are the key players in the organization even after 10 years. The vision of Google was emerged in 1996 as a research project in Stanford University by the contribution of two founders. Later, Brin and Page stepped out from the university to initiate their new company, Google with the help of venture capital institutes.
Organization Profile Type Industry Founded Founder(s) Headquarters Area served Key people
Products
Employees Subsidiaries Website Revenue Profit Main Competitors
Public
Internet, Computer software
Menlo Park, California (September 4, 1998) Sergey M. Brin, Lawrence E. Page
Mountain View, California, United States Worldwide
Eric E. Schmidt (Chairman & CEO) Sergey M. Brin (Technology President) Lawrence E. Page (Products President)
Standalone applications, Desktop extensions, Downloadable mobile products, Account management, Advertising, Communication and publishing, Development, Mapping, Search, Statistics YouTube, DoubleClick, On2 Technologies, GrandCentral, Picnik, Aardvark, AdMob 20,621
Google.com
US$23.651 billion (2009) US$6.520 billion (2009)
Table 2: Organization Profile of Google
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Analysis of Business Strategies 1
Selection and Maintenance of the Aim “…A single, unambiguous aim is the keystone of successful military operations. Selection and maintenance of the aim is regarded as the master principle of war…”
(JointDoctrine, 2008)
In military terms, this is all about military strategies to overpower the enemy, in business environment this is about competing business strategies in the market. This principle is also considered as the master principles of the war. Google was initiated based on the vision of the core founders. The idea came to them during the university studies at the graduation level. They stepped out from the university in order to start the company. This shows the focus on the goals and aims since the beginning of the organization. They were starting their business in a tough environment where IT giants like Microsoft and Yahoo were successfully operating on. This was the era that Microsoft was flying high with the profits gain through the record breaking software revolution with Windows 95 and windows 98. The massive amount of money that Microsoft earned by their core products such as Microsoft windows, Microsoft office, Microsoft software development and server products were pumped in to their internet search facility improvements in term of research and development. However, Google did not give-up. That kept their aim of being an internet giant, steady form the beginning. One key point of their success is the focus on one stream. At that time Microsoft was mainly focus on desktop based software development. But with the use of their massive profit margins Microsoft was able to invest on diversified areas on IT. However Google did not follow up their main competitor Microsoft or Yahoo. Google focuses only on internet business by providing internet search facility to their customer with free of charge. They came up with their own model of advertising base revenue making system which was very much successful at the end. Yahoo and Microsoft were mainly concentrating of adding features as much as possible to their search engines and web pages. However, Google believes on the simplistic approach, where load the search engine fast as much as possible and the results to be returns at the same speed. PPMG 130
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The core founder of Google describes their main goals and their success as follows, "…The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want." When Google began, you would have been pleasantly surprised to enter a search query and immediately find the right answer. Google became successful precisely because we were better and faster at finding the right answer than other search engines at the time…” (Google, 2009) Google always believes on usability and the simplicity. They integrate only the essential functions that majority of their users expects form Google. They do not add features to show off the technology advancements or capabilities. Google has continuously maintained their research and development excellence throughout their history which was their competitive advantage in the market competition. Focus on Internet Search Since the organization existence, Google is continuously focusing on improvements of internet search, because majority of the organization revenue was coming through the internet search related web advertising business. They have improved their business in to video search, image search scholar search and many more during the last decade. Diversify the business While keeping the main focus on their core business internet search and web advertising revenue generation model, Google is also focusing on related diversification as well. Each and every diversification step made by Google creates new set of competitors and battles to be fought and win. However, as a challenge seeking company, Google is diversifying their product folio by acquiring small competitors and sucking their technology competence in to the Google. Competition Google has clearly identified their competitors on different markets, internet search, web browsers, operating systems, online documentation, mobile platforms, video streaming, web mail and other online services. The latest competition is on web documentation markets and web operating system market with the IT giant, Microsoft.
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2
Sustenance/ Maintenance of Morale “…Morale is a positive state of mind derived from inspired political and military leadership, a shared sense of purpose and values, well-being, perceptions of worth and group cohesion….”
(JointDoctrine, 2008)
Figure 3: Key Leaders of the Organization Left to Right Eric E. Schmidt (Chairman and CEO) Sergey M. Brin (Technology President) and Lawrence E. Page (Products President) [Source: (Google, 2010)]
Usually, the sustenance of the moral is clearly associated around the leadership of the commanders in the battle field. Similarly, the moral of the Google troops are the leaderships. Other than the leadership, the factors like training, discipline and faith are also matters in order to maintain moral. Google’s moral is mainly depends on their three leader. Eric E. Schmidt (Chairman and CEO), Sergey M. Brin (Founder and Technology President) and Lawrence E. Page (Founder and Products President) are the key personals of the organization. The leadership style and the culture are more familiar to university style in the organization due to the influences of the key leader. Both the founders were PhD students in Stanford University when they were left the university. Again the CEO is also holding a PhD degree. Therefore, the leadership and management style is fully crafted with the university system where Google believes on group meetings, relaxation, sports and other social recreational activities. The following statements made by Google leader, Sergey Brin regarding the recent controversial on ‘China's Censorship’ were strong, straight forward and encouraging.
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Usually, Sergey Brin is not an aggressive speaker on public or neither criticise their competitors. However, he stepped forward regarding this issue and made the companies view on ‘China Censors’ issue by keeping his head straight. According to the current market competition it is not easy to make a decision to pull out the Google’s operations from the world’s biggest market in term of population, China. “…I certainly hope they make it a high priority," he said. "Human rights issues deserve equal time to the trade issues that are high priority now … I hope this gets taken seriously…”
(Blodget, 2010)
"…I'm very disappointed for them in particular," he said. "As I understand, they have effectively no market share – so they essentially spoke against freedom of speech and human rights simply in order to contradict Google. We understand that many free-speech advocates support Google's move, and on a purely philosophical level, we support it, too. On a business and practical level, however, we think it was a mistake…”
(Blodget, 2010)
The following statement was made by the Google CEO which shows the Google’s focus on future development and being the market leader in IT. It is encouraging to hear these kinds of statements coming out from a corporate leader which also motivates their employees. “…We don't want people to have to learn about 20 different products that work in 20 different ways…A year from now, hopefully, we will have integrated offerings that target the person and the phone…”
(MarketingVOX, 2006)
On the other hand, Google is involved in employee training up to the maximum level. The facilities given by Google to their employees are presented on another section. According the provided information, Google provides everything and anything in order to increase
the
employee
satisfaction
by Figure 4: Library Facilities at Google [Source: (CnnMoney, 2008)]
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developing their skills varying form IT facilities, libraries relax environment, study rooms,
discussion
rooms…etc.
The
expected objectives of giving all these kind of remuneration and facilities to the employees
are
higher
productivity,
employee retention and most importantly sustain the moral.
Figure 5: Training and Office Facility [Source: (CnnMoney, 2008)]
The principle of war, ‘Sustenance of Moral’ and the ‘Need of Offensive Action’ are goes hand in hand.
In order to sustain the moral, companies should compete with their
competitors in an aggressive mode. Otherwise the employees would become bored by working without a threat or a challenge. Therefore, Google ensures that they focus each and every second, by seeking the ways that they can beat their competitors.
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3
Need for Offensive Action “…Offensive action is the practical way in which a commander seeks to gain advantage, sustain momentum and seize the initiative…”
(JointDoctrine, 2008)
Offensive action in military point of view is all about fighting aggressively in the battle field. However, in business environment, offensive action is about compete aggressively in different markets. Battles fields in military operations are equivalent to Markets in Business. Google compete on number of market very aggressively. In some of the markets, they are leading the ways and some others; they following the leaders. On the other hand Google has very high competition in some markets and comparatively less in other markets. Internet Search Market Google has followed this principle since they initiated their company as internet search provider. They were carried out number of offensive action against their competitor at that time, Microsoft and Yahoo. Even after capturing the 75% market share, still they are carrying out offensive actions time to time. For example Google start their company by providing basic search facility. Then, they developed their software to provide web mail services, images search, file search, internet messenger services and many more. Now they have developed their technology even by providing image searchers which can find the content of the images. Each and every month they update and improve their systems in order to facilitate the maximum accuracy to their customers. This makes harder to compete with them in search engine market. Competitors are almost lost the battle even though the take counter measures sometimes. Web Browser Market Google got in to the web browser market very recently, in late 2008. With their efficient design of the software as well as aggressive promotion, Google has captured 7% percent market share by threatening their competitor where they were in the web browser business for last two decades. Google aggressively promote their products by using their competitive advantage such as web advertising. The following chart shows the current market share distribution among the key products released by key players.
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7%
5% 3% 1% Microsoft Internet Explorer Firefox Chrome
24%
Safari
60%
Opera Other
Figure 6: Web Browser Market Share [Source: (NetMarketShare, 2010)]
Web Mail Market The main competitors of Google, Microsoft and yahoo was initiated their web mail services in 1996 and 1997 respectively. However, Google came in to the market only on 2004. Since then, they have been able to capture the market share up to 8%. Their comparatively efficient and effective systems and designs were helping them in the web mail battle. Google make offensive actions by reducing the mail logging time and keeping it simple. Google has deployed a separate Research Lab in order to carry out the improvements on the web mail service, Gmail.
4%
6% 38%
Hotmail Gmail Yahoo Mail AOL Mail
44%
Other 8%
Figure 7: Web Mail Market share [Source: (WebDevelopersNotes, 2004) ]
Mobile Platform Markets The Google’s newest release of android mobile platform was so much popular and was able to capture the market very fast. It is increasingly getting popular in the global markets as well. Figure 8: Google Android Platform Logo [Source: (Wikipedia, 2010)]
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“…In February 2010 ComScore ranked the Android platform as obtaining a 9.0% of the Smartphone platform market share. This figure was up from an earlier estimate of 5.2% stated in November 2009...” “…In October, 2009, Gartner Inc. predicted that by 2012, Android would become the world's second most popular Smartphone platform, behind Nokia's Symbian OS, which is very popular outside the US. Meanwhile, BlackBerry would fall from 2nd to 5th place, iPhone would remain in 3rd place, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile would remain in 4th place…” “…Analytics firm Flurry estimates that 250,000 Motorola Droid phones were sold in the United States during the phone's first week in stores…” “…In May 2010, Android's first quarter US sales surpassed that of the rival iPhone platform. According to a report by the NPD group, Android achieved 28% Smartphone sales in the US market, up 8% from the December quarter. The iPhone's sales fell flat at 21% over the same reporting period...” (Wikipedia, 2010) The above comments made by number of different new reports support the arguments made in the previous paragraphs relating to the Google’s new mobile platform. Google Application including Google Docs Google Docs, a web based application service that provides free of charge documentation capability to the users, became very much famous among the internet community. Google made consecutive improvements on their service by providing more value added features in order to compete with their main competitors such as ‘twiki’, ‘helpndoc’, ‘zoho’…etc. Future and Potential Markets Currently Google is carrying out lot of incubation projects by having the long term vision towards 2-3 decades ahead. They have been sign some unusual agreement (unusual for a
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IT company) with NASA, Satellites, General Motors (Automobile) and number of hardware companies to design and build prototype for some imaginary products as shown in the following images. At the same time, currently, Google is getting ready to battle with Microsoft in operating market. Operating system market was the Microsoft’s ‘cash cow’ in their product portfolio; simply the major revenue comes through that product. However, Microsoft is dominating this market since 1990’s. No one was able to challenge Microsoft since then. They are holding more than 90% of market.
Figure 9: Logo of Google Coming up Chrome OS [Source: (chromium, 2009) ]
Now Google, as a major competitor of Microsoft in many perspectives, has developed a web based operating system. Even though the operating system is not yet launch for public, the leaked information confirms that it would be a great threat for Microsoft’s virtual monopoly state in the OS market. There would be a greater battle ahead between Google and Microsoft where Google as a new entrance and the Microsoft to secure their market as well as the dignity. Google has put its first steps of another offensive action against their competitor by announcing the OS development officially, which has been developed since many years.
Figure 10: Prototypes of a future product Design by Google [Source: Email]
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4
Element of Surprise in Action “…Surprise is the consequence of shock and confusion induced by the deliberate or incidental introduction of the unexpected…”
(JointDoctrine, 2008)
This is a very famous principle as well as a strategy used by many military organizations. It is all about attacking the enemy where enemy is not expecting you to attack them or where they are not ready to take any defence action. All most all the technology related companies try to use this strategy to the maximum. Therefore, this is the most import principle in term of business organizations and business environment. Google and its main competitors always followed this strategy. Some of the historic examples and can be elaborated in order to explain the usage of this principle. Entrance of Google to the industry itself is a surprise for their competitors such as Microsoft and Yahoo. Using that opportunity Google was able to capture the internet search market within few years by defeating old giant companies. Google developed their infrastructure such as building the fastest cluster computer in the world secretly. That was one of the greatest success factors of Google. However Google is not providing any kind of detail relating to the power of their server systems. By estimating, it has been calculated that the Google servers comprise the world fastest cluster computer. Google keep all server information as top secret to take the advantage of this principle of war. Google released their web browser to the market in 2008 September by surprising their competitor.
By taking the
advantage of surprise, Google was able to capture 7% (third position) from the web browser market share within less than 2 year becoming a greater threat for first and second positions. Google does not provide any kind of information relating to their software and hardware mechanism. According to the
Figure 11: Logo of the Google Chrome Web Browser [Source: (Wikipedia, 2009) ]
leaked information, Google has customized some open source software according to their own specification in order to perform better than other companies. Even though they develop their software by themselves to be much more efficient that competitor, Google does not sell those special software in the market. They use it only for PPMG 130
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cooperate operation purposes which allows them to keep the software secretly away from their competitors. Hardware also behaves the same. Even though they purchase typical hardware like hard drives and CPUs, Google customize those up to a greater extend and does not provide any information to outside. Google Buzz is also a surprise product launch very recently by Google. The product was introduces with coupled with Gmail in overnight without any
Figure 12: Logo of the Google Buzz Service [Source: (Wikipedia, 2010)]
public beta testing. However, the product became unsuccessful due to privacy issues. This is a good example, for an attempt that surprising the competitors got failed. Google has invested huge amount of money on number
of
programming
incubation languages
projects and
like
web
GO based
operating system Chrome OS. OS market is the main Success of the Google’s competitor, Microsoft. Therefore, Google eyed for an operating system development in order to compete with Microsoft in OS market. Very recently, Google officially announced target on Web based OS to the public. However, they have been developing this operating system since long time ago even though they kept it secretly. By doing that
they expect
to
surprise their
competitor as well as to take the first mover
Figure 13: User Interface Snapshot of the Google Chrome Operating System [Source: (chromium, 2009)]
advantage in the web OS market. Developing android in secret also a very good example of surprising their enemies. Google was able to bypass their strong competitors who have been there in the market for decade, within less than 2 years and position themselves in number two position. By evaluating the above examples it is clear that Google has used the principle of element of surprise up to greater extent to beat the competitors and capture the
Figure 14: Google Android Platform Logo [Source: (Wikipedia, 2010)]
market share.
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5
Security of the Troops “…Security is the provision and maintenance of an operating environment that affords the necessary freedom of action, when and where required, to achieve objectives…”
(JointDoctrine, 2008)
This principle is somewhat different form the other principles where this is not directly matched to the business environment. In military term, this is about anticipated the possible scenarios and contingencies in the advance, attack, withdrawal and defence. (Colonne, 2010). However, in term of Google perspective as a business organization, this could be job security of the employees, physical safety of the employees at the office premises and the market security of products and services. Employee’s Safety at Work All the safety measures are been taken by the Google management in order to provide a secure and safe environment for their employees...etc. by adhering to the United States government safety rules and regulations. Those standards are also followed in all their buildings and premises located around the world. Job Security This was very hot topic during the recession period where almost all the United States companies laid off their employees including Google itself. Even in the tough economic time Google laid only marketing and sales staff. Google was able to protect their technical staff including engineers and top brains during the recession. 3% 3% 3% 6%
Google Yahoo Bing Baidu 85%
Other
Figure 15: Internet Search Market Share [Source: (NetMarketShare, 2010) ]
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Securing Market Share Google has managed to secure their market share during the search engine battle with their main competitor, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo. In other product categories also Google has manage to secure the captured market share such as mobile platform market and web browser market. Up to very recent, Google dominates the online documentation service with the use of their famous product called ‘Google docs’. However, in last week the Google’s main competitor Microsoft launches their online documentation service with more value added features. Therefore, there would be a close battle between the two companies in the online documentation market in near future. Securing the existing market share would be a much harder challenge for Google. However, Google has the reputation of securing the captured market share in any product category when the once captured. It is up to the future to decide the winner in this market.
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6
Concentration of Force “…Concentration of force involves the decisive, synchronized application of superior fighting power (conceptual, physical, and moral) to realize intended effects, when and where required…”
(JointDoctrine, 2008)
“…gaining the maximum fire superiority before the attack…”
(Colonne, 2010)
In a military operation fire power is all about human power, weapon power and the moral. This can be applied to the Google with slight alteration as well. Google’s fire powers are the human resource (best brains in the world), state of art technology software and hardware. However Google is concentrating their forces very secretly. It does not provide any official details on the software or the power of hardware they use. According to the leaked and estimated information, Google holds the world’s most powerful computer when all its clusters are accumulated which place around the world in geographical means. “…a quasi-supercomputer is Google's search engine system with estimated total processing power of between 126 and 316 teraflops, as of April 2004. In June 2006 the New York Times estimated that the Googolplex and its server farms contain 450,000 servers. According to recent estimations, the processing power of Google's cluster might reach from 20 to 100 petaflops….”
(Wikipedia, 2010)
Figure 16: Left - Google First Server Computer, Right Server Computer (Illustration) [Source: (Wikipedia, 2010)]
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All the hardware systems used by Google are custom made by embedding special fault tolerant feature by the Google engineers. Another term of concentration of fire power is human resource. Google has hired the world’s top brains. The human resource perspective of the Google is discussed in the next section. Third perspective is the concentration of ‘Power of Software’. From the core search algorithm to web server, Google is using their own specialized software. Other than that they have acquired some software by accruing the small software companies. Three of the most famous software acquisitions are You Tube, Double Click and Picasa. Other than those Google has acquired 72 different kinds of software companies that help Google to become more and stronger in the market battle.
Figure 17: Logos of You Tube, Double Click and Picasa Left to Right
Google has invested billions and billions of dollars to concentrate their forces to gain the ultimate advantage in the battle. This is how the Google wins the battle of fastest and the most accurate battle by process the customers queries and return their results less than a second even.
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7
Economy of Effort “…Economy of effort is the judicious exploitation of manpower, materiel and time in relation to the achievement of objectives…” (JointDoctrine, 2008) “…do not use the sledge-Hammer to crack a nut…” (Colonne, 2010)
In military operations, Commandos and Special Forces are used to carry out the special operation, because those people are specifically trained to accomplish their task in much harder and difficult situations than the normal army troops. At the same time, these special troops are usually used in less numbers for a mission. Similarly, the selected organization Google has also use specialize technical people on special product development. Google does not spend lot of money on some projects. One good example is their android mobile platform. It was initially released in 2008. One objective of the project (mission) is to get in to the mobile market and compete with other industry competitors. Similar product of Microsoft is 10 years matured product. However Google beat the Microsoft within 2 year by capturing a market share of 6% where Microsoft holds only 3% by doubling the percentage. This was achieved by using specialized techniques such as adopting free and open source models without investing much on development compared to Microsoft. That is a good example where Google achieved maximum output through minimum input. 4% 3% <1% 6% 14%
Java ME 40%
iPhone Symbian Android
33%
BlackBerry Windows Mobile Other
Figure 18: Mobile Platform Market Share [Source: (NetMarketShare, 2010)]
Another important factor is that the knowledge level of the workforce in Google. Even though the following statement is six years old, the facts remain the same in the current
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context as well. That is why that Google made their reputation as the best place to work in the world as well as the hardest place to get in as well. “…What's Google's Secret Weapon? An Army of Ph.D.'s …The New York Times reports on Google's success and desire in hiring Ph.D.'s. It says that Google's willingness to let every employee spend 20% of his or her time on an independent project is a compelling motivator and that they estimate that Google has as many Ph.D.'s working for it as Microsoft, which is 30 times larger. How many other companies put Ph.D. a plus in their want ads...?”
(Stross, 2004)
Google treats their PhD employees as their specialized force and considerable number of the entire carder are PhD holders. Therefore, Google use this as a weapon when competing with other companies, especially with competitor like Microsoft who do does not believe in PhDs as much as Google. (Stross, 2004) Google competing well with Microsoft where Microsoft has nearly 4 times than Google in term of number of employees, according to 2010 Statistics. That is the power of using specialized forced on specialized tasks. Another perspective on economy of effort in Google’s behaviour is the simplicity of their designs. Recently Google released their web browser called ‘Chrome’ which is increasingly get popular due to its less resource intensive behaviour and the speedy responsiveness. Goole always appreciate the minimalistic approach where they attach only the most important functionalities to their product and keep the rest aside. This was also a success of the Google search engine where they use simple while colour web page with a text box to be types, in without putting all kind images an interactive where it would take much longer time to load through poor internet connections which makes the customers unhappy.
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Figure 19: Google Web Page, Simple and Efficient [Source: (Wikipedia, 2010)]
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8
Mental and Physical Flexibility of the Troops “…Flexibility – the ability to change readily to meet new circumstances – comprises agility, responsiveness, resilience, acuity and adaptability…” (JointDoctrine, 2008)
Mental and physical flexibility are essential in military operation, because no one knows about the challenges coming ahead in a battle field. Military officers should be able to think and act accordingly. To make such decisions, they need to have the authority and physical capacity to deal with it. Quick decisions are a must in an operation where the single decision may responsible for hundreds and thousands of lives. Similarly, business environments also reflect the same circumstances. Google as a business organization provides the flexibility in term of mental and physical where no other company in the world do that. The images taken at the Google offices reflect the flexibility up to a greater extend. Google is doing their business where the brain capacity involves a lot. Majority of the Google employees are well educated high profile engineers designers programmers and technical people. Usually these people use their brain a lot during the work time extensively compared to the other jobs. It is a one common characteristic in the software or the IT industry in general. Because of that, Google think lot about the mental flexibility of their employees. According to the Google, they are put lot effort to maintain the mental and physical flexibility to level where employees do not get stressed. Mental flexibility is important the designers to designs the programs, codes, and user interfaces as they want. Then the environment should also physically support the decisions As it can be seen on the images, Google has deployed lot of equipments to relax their mind using physical instruments. Equipments such as sleeping facility, massaging, cinema, sports, personal conversation cabins and lot more other facilities are used to keep their employees minds in peace where employees can give the 100% capacity to the company.
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.
Figure 20: Relaxed Working Environment [Source: (CnnMoney, 2008)]
Company maintains the mental flexibility by relaxing the traditional corporate rules and regulations. Google allow the employees to bring their dogs to the work place, up to their desk, again Google do not have any dress code. Employees can wear any kind of a dress as they want. Google has given the decision making authority to their employees to increase their innovation capacity. Google provides only very simple and broad guide lines to their employees. Rest of the decisions are up to the employees to be taken collectively after own discussions. “…These guidelines are, by necessity, broad. Software creation and distribution are complex and the technology is continuously evolving…We look forward to an ongoing discussion with you and with our partners. We would like to hear your suggestions to improve and update these principles…”
(Google, 2006)
As a summary Google provide only set of Software Principles, Privacy principles, Design principles and some of the security policies. Google simply use white boards at the beginning of the new product development processes where the employees illustrate their innovative ideas on that.
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“…Recruiting the accumulated mass of information catered through various channels and systems, all Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them and deliver new value. In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, stated that her analysis showed that half of new product launches originated from 20% time…” (Ahmad, 2007) The following comments made by the Google CEO, Eric Schmidt show the level of empowerment that they have provided to their employees in term of decision making. Google is based on effectiveness, not on the traditional office time work. “…knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5, and that smart businesses will …strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers way… Those that succeed will attract the best performers, securing …the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years At Google, we seek that advantage…”
(Painchaud, 2005)
“…It is nice that Google mentions that not only creativity is key to their success, but so is the rigor and discipline behind their approach. The company has eight brainstorming sessions each year with 100 engineers. Six concepts are pitched and discussed for ten minutes each. The stated goal is to build on the initial idea with at least one complementary idea per minute…” (Painchaud, 2005) Figure 21: Employees Enjoying the Google Facilities [Source: (CnnMoney, 2008)]
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9
Co-Operation “…Cooperation entails the incorporation of teamwork and a sharing of dangers, burdens, risks and opportunities in every aspect of warfare...” (JointDoctrine, 2008)
This principle focuses on the co-operation between, within the military unit as well as with the outside of the unit. (Colonne, 2010). This is important not only for military or business organization but for all kinds of groups and team works. Google maintains a high level of co-operation between their businesses unites, simply the employees. Fully pledge infrastructure and high tech equipments are deployed all over their business locations around the world. Co-operation between employees could be room discussions, voice conferences, video calls, emails, text messages, corporate networks, sharing collaboration tools or any kind of digital means. Most of the Google employees are worked as groups or small business units. On the other hand Google work hand in hand with many organizations such as universities, research institutes, governments, non-profitable organizations, business organizations as well as with their own competitors in different terms and means. During their historic movement, Google has acquired large number of small and medium size organizations and in numeric terms, its nearly 72 acquisitions. Another main stream of co-operation is through agreements and partnerships. There are huge amount of partnerships established with different kind of institutes for different objectives and purposes, where some of the partnerships belong to charity work and others comes under business strategies.
Figure 22: Group Meetings and Discussions [Source: (CnnMoney, 2008)]
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Figure 23: Relax ash Sharing Thoughts [Source: (CnnMoney, 2008)]
Some of the highlighted co-operation can be shown as follows. We open our Tokyo R&D (research & development) centre to attract the best and brightest among Japanese and other Asian engineers. The Google Print Program (since renamed Google Book Search) expands through digital scanning partnerships with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, and Oxford plus the New York Public Library. We forge a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider. A new partnership with Universo Online (UOL) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans. We announce a major partnership with AOL to offer Google search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com. We announce a partnership with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile telecom carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China. We sign partnerships to give free access to Google Apps for Education to 70,000 university students in Kenya and Rwanda. In partnership with the Growing Connection, we plant a vegetable garden in the middle of the Googleplex, the output of which is incorporated into our café offerings. We announce a partnership with Salesforce.com, combining that company's ondemand CRM applications with AdWords. We partner with IBM on a supercomputing initiative so that students can learn to work at Internet scale on computing challenges.
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We get involved with the U.S. political process at the presidential nominating conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties.
(Google, 2010)
General Motors partners with Google for Android-powered cars (Hollister, 2010) By evaluating the above mentioned small sub set of partnerships, it clearly visible that Google has partnered with quiet different types of partner such as education related, politics, entertainment, media, advertising, mobile, research development, automobile and many more. At the same time above co-operations will help the Google to reduce the risk as well as to explore the opportunities. Even though some of the agreement which made by Google are non profit making agreements, the company may able to win the goodwill as return, which is extremely important for a business in long term sustainability and again it could make indirect profits as well. For examples co-operation with universities by proving technology services and scholarships can have long term positive impacts on many ways. As mentioned in the principles, these kinds of co-operations with external parties strengthen the company’s future in term of business, up to a greater extent. Again the relationship build between the employees due to collaborative work experience create very pleasant environment to work while minimise the collations and other minor issues that could be problematic between employees.
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10 Administration and Logistics “…To sustain a force is to generate the means by which its fighting power and freedom of action are maintained…”
(JointDoctrine, 2008)
“…No tactical plan can succeed without this support. This is prime reason as to why the Germans lost the WWII in Russia…”
(Colonne, 2010)
In military point of view, administration and logistic is very much crucial. All the food items, technical and communication equipment, weapon and ammunition, providing radar facilities, statistics, maps…etc comes under here. The army needs to get access to these resources at the right time with the right volume and quantity. In business perspective also the facts remain the same. For example, all the equipments from paper pins to computers, all the accessories need to be there in order to perform efficiently. Google provide these administration and logistic to their employees up to a greater extend. Following images proves the fact as well.
Figure 24: Equipment Repair Store at Office [Source: (CnnMoney, 2008)]
Figure 26: Free Food at Office [Source: (CnnMoney, 2008)]
Figure 25: Office with Full Equipments [Source: (CnnMoney, 2008)]
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Google has selected as the best place to work in the world for consecutive year 2006 2008. (CnnMoney, 2008) Google provides a world class facility to their employees within the organization. Local expressions of each location, from a mural in Buenos Aires to ski gondolas in Zurich, showcasing each office's region and personality…” Bicycles or scooters for efficient travel between meetings; dogs; lava lamps; massage chairs; large inflatable balls…” Googlers sharing cubes, yurts and huddle rooms – and very few solo offices Laptops everywhere – standard issue for mobile coding, email on the go and note-taking Foosball, pool tables, volleyball courts, assorted video games, pianos, ping pong tables, and gyms that offer yoga and dance classes Grassroots employee groups for all interests, like meditation, film, wine tasting and salsa dancing Healthy lunches and dinners for all staff at a variety of cafés Break rooms packed with a variety of snacks and drinks to keep Googlers going
(Google, 2006)
The above statement published on the Google corporate website shows their concerns towards the administration logistics. Already, they have gone beyond the normal facilities. Currently there have expand their administration and logistics supply up to personal services such as car washing, facilities to wash cloths, free food at any time, wide verity of sports, equipment repair centres, libraries, cinema halls, personal cabins, fully fledge office areas, all kind of high tech equipments…etc. in order to make sure that the employees lives are balanced and easy going. These kinds of facilities are not mean by this principle of war. However, Google has gone beyond that principle. According to their corporate believes, providing these kind of extraordinary facilities help the organization in improve their productivity through the employees’ ultimate satisfaction as well as to decrease the problems faced by their employees. It provides fuel in the competitive market battles.
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Limitations of the Principles of War Principles of war have own limitations as well. These principles do not provide any kind of prescription, formula, and recipe or check list in order to help in tem of planning successful military operations. Similarly, the principles do not provide any business strategies to ensure the business growth in business environment. Principles do not provide answers to the challenges and dilemmas that faced by commanders in battlefield neither manager in business environment. (Army ROTC, 2007) Principles of war are simply provides only the guideline to drive the critical thinking towards the right direction. At the end of the day, application of critical thinking and decision making backed up by those ten principles define the success of the failure. Simply knowing the ten principles of ward will not take you any ways unless you critically apply those in to the situation with the help of common sense and experience. As a summary, en principles of war are just set of guideline that many be applicable to military to business to any other field by customizing it accordingly.
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Conclusion The gist of this report revolves around the ten principles of war proposed by Carl Von
Clausewits. First section of the report gives a brief introduction to the domain context. It presents the evaluation and the changes of interpretations made by different army groups around the world by comparing and contrast the altered war principles. Then the next section provides a comprehensive set of details on the selected company. Little bit of history and the current profile of the selected company, Google has been presented in a summarize manner to give a brief idea about the company background. In the next section, each principle has discussed one after the other in very comprehensive manner by analyzing the Googleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activities based on them. Examples are provided in order to support and strengthen the analysis up to a greater extent. Finally some of the limitations of the principles are presented in order to highlight the real use of principles in different domain contexts.
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