CTC - Matthew Glotzbach

Below are notes from the presentation by Matthew Glotzbach, Head of Products, Google Enterprise (emphasis is mine)

Enterprise technologies are built by the experts, for the experts. They rarely take the end-user into consideration. The innovation actually becomes more complicated.

The traditional boundaries of time, 9-5, Monday through Friday, are actually going away. The difference between work life and personal life are blurred.

The result is that we want to be able to use the same tools in business world as we do at home.

Consumer applications are not just finding way into enterprise, they are becoming fundamental enterprise applications.

Innovation should not be at the expense of simplicity and ease-of-use.

At the end of the day, the consumer on the internet and the employee in the enterprise are the same person.

Enterprise lags behind consumer world:

- Employees are tired of not being able to find information

- Silos are information are the norm

- Business applications require training and expertise

- Collaboration systems fail at scale

1950s-1980s – Office Worker

1980s-1990s – Knowledge Worker

21^st Century – Self-Directed Innovator

What self-directed innovators needs:

- Talent

- Direction

- Information: Photographic memory, company’s collective wisdom, the world’s information

Characteristics of self-directed innovator:

- Not process driven

- Collaborates with broad network of friends and colleagues

- Intermingled personal and work lives

- Needs information even when not at her desk

- Does not spend majority of time in a single application

- Tends not to be patient

Dependence on word processor and PC as a whole is diminishing.

The applications that will succeed are the ones fundamentally built around collaboration.

The tools/applications are built around watching what people do and solving existing problems.

SUMMARY

 Focus on user, all else will follow

 Simplicity drives adoption and adoption implies value

Employees and conumers are the same people

Collaboration fosters innovation

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