Marissa Mayer’s 9 notions of innovation is making the rounds in the blogosphere this week. I read about the 9 notions in BusinessWeek’s new magazine about innovation called “In“. The notions resonated with me; so I’m helping spread the meme-love here at Experience Planner:

1. Ideas come from everywhere: Google expects everyone to innovate, even the finance team.
2. Share everything you can: Every idea, every project, every deadline — it’s all accessible to everyone on the intranet.
3. You’re brilliant, we’re hiring: Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favor intelligence over experience.
4. A license to pursue dreams: Employees get a “free” day a week. Half of new launches come from this “20% time.”
5. Innovation, not instant perfection Google launches early and often in small beta tests, before releasing new features widely.
6. Don’t politic, use data: Mayer discourages the use of “I like” in meetings, pushing staffers to use metrics.
7. Creativity loves restraint: Give people a vision, rules about how to get there, and deadlines.
8. Worry about usage and users, not money: Provide something simple to use and easy to love.
9. Don’t kill projects — morph them: There’s always a kernel of something good that can be salvaged.

UPDATE August 22, 2007 - It turns out that this post got hacked!  I have no idea how and I’m looking into it.  I’ve reverted the above back to the original post, but I’ve left the hacked and admittedly more amusing version below:

1. Ideas come from everywhere: Google expects everyone to innovate, even the finance team. Other examples of innovative finance teams: Enron, WorldCom, President Bush’s budget advisor.
2. Share everything you can: Every idea, every project, every deadline — it’s all accessible to everyone on the intranet. And yet Googlers are very careful not to accidentally have any idea what everyone else is doing — especially the PR department.
3. You’re brilliant, we’re hiring: Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favor intelligence over experience. As for high-experience, low-intelligence, that’s why they have CEO Eric Schmidt.
4. A license to pursue dreams: Employees get a “free” day a week. Half of new launches come from this “20% time.” It has to be approved, and Larry decided it has to be close to the “80% time,” but sure, it’s kinda free. They have $5 massages and you’re going to nitpick over this?
5. Innovation, not instant perfection Google launches early and often in small beta tests, before releasing new features widely. The first priority isn’t making the customers happy — it’s pushing releases to keep the press happy.
6. Don’t politic, use data: Mayer discourages the use of “I like” in meetings, pushing staffers to use metrics. It’s not “Larry Page favors me because I have blackmail.” It’s “Larry Page dated me for three years. Larry Page is [redacted] inches long. Larry Page is classified with low self-esteem. Larry Page is promoting me over you.”
7. Creativity loves restraint: Give people a vision, rules about how to get there, and deadlines. Or give them leather straps and a ball gag, and you’ll see, creativity adores restraint.
8. Worry about usage and users, not money: Provide something simple to use and easy to love. The money will follow. Then, cash in before the money follows the stockholders out the door.
9. Don’t kill projects — morph them: There’s always a kernel of something good that can be salvaged. Ugly projects never die, they just get passed to a new team and warped out of all recognition until the original developer sits at his desk, gorging himself on free trail mix and weeping.