Marissa Mayer gives some insight into how Google flourishes with innovation in a Forbes article. Number five caught my eye:

5. SHARE AS MUCH INFORMATION AS YOU CAN
“People are blown away by the information you can get on MOMA, our intranet. Because there is so much information shared across the company, employees have insight into what’s happening with the business and what’s important. We also have people do things like Snippets. Every Monday, all the employees write an email that has five to seven bullet points on what you did the previous week. Being a search company, we take all the emails and make a giant Web page and index them. If you’re wondering, ‘Who’s working on maps?’ you can find out. It allows us to share what we know across the whole company, and it reduces duplication.”

Imagine what could be done at a much larger scale with the catch being that there would be no firewalls, no corporate security…no isolationism. Everyone knows what every one else is doing…no fear…just effective and pure synergy on a planetary scale.

Take the red pill.

I read Paul Graham off and on and find most of what he writes about interesting even if I don’t agree with all of what he has to say. His latest essay, “Six Principles for Making New Things”, is one that seems to echo a lot of what’s been said before about solving problems with software. In his own words the steps are:

I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

To summarize, find a simple solution to a problem and release early and release often.