Facebook - Developing a culture of Innovation

Facebook is a social network company which allows people, friends and relatives to come together on the single platform and keep in touch virtually. Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg (along with his four Harvard fellows and roommates) in 2004 which operates as a mobile application and website that enables people to connect, discover, share and communicate each other on mobile devices, tablets or PC worldwide. People use Facebook to know what’s going on in the world and to share and express what matters to them.

Facebook was started just for Harvard students to connect and to know each other but then it expanded to other universities. Today Facebook is not only expanded to universities or limited to students but it is getting space into more than that. Facebook is defined by many as the father of social networking platform. Facebook constantly brings new tools and activities to make it more interesting.

Let’s have a look at what Facebook is?

Facebook’s software solution includes mobile messenger which engages people, allows people to chat and also allows businesses to engage with their customer. Instagram (bought by Facebook) which allows people to share photos, videos through filtering option; WhatsApp (another App bought by Facebook) which is a mobile as well as PC based application used as a messaging application. If we take a deep dive into the app, Facebook provide same community to make a group for them, newsfeed, live comments, live video calling, provides information about which friends are nearby you , provides platform for the advertiser to advertise on Facebook and reach to the mass people, provides game recommendation, provides information about the nearby places, App analytics tool (to view engagement, post, audience, location), app recommendation store, moves tool which shows the calorie burned by activity and many more activities that are beyond imagination.

Much more has been said about the business of Facebook but it's more important to know that this tech leader is not just a company but it’s doing more than that inside the organisation. It is known for a hacker and open culture which rewards creative problem solving and rapid decision-making and involves all the people in which they cared about and they believe in constant iterating and improving philosophy. Facebook is driven by creativity and innovation phenomenon. Facebook keeps in-house artists and motivates others to do so constantly.

Now, let’s see what’s this Creativity and Innovation is and how it matters?

Creativity in simple terms- is the ability to imagine and think on the other hand Innovation is the ability to implement on new ideas. People are always misunderstood that creativity need to be new in idea or method and there is always a war ongoing between individuals complaining that they are not creative and how should they improve on themselves to be creative, so just to clear this thought process –anything you imagine is creative. Every individual is unique and creative in its own way – all we need to do is bring it out of us!

Now when creativity joins with something original and meaningful it turns out be innovation. Creativity in most terms is linked to innovation as one create ideas and latter implements them. Innovation is simply implemented creativity.

For Facebook it is all creativity and innovation on which it is growing and expanding. What Facebook was when it started – a mere platform to know and connect with people and in today’s date Facebook is like a family member. From chatting to video calling to education means to business to what not, the more you dive in Facebook world the more you feel enthralled by its service and functions. This is what creativity and innovation leads to – from nothing to everything. For Facebook to survive in the fast paced world where digital Darwinism is a reality, it needs to constantly innovate and the best thing that a company can do is to imbibe a culture wherein every person at the company tends to be creative. That is exactly what Facebook has done.

"As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems." - Edward de Bono

Facebook Culture

"I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person," Zuckerberg said. "It's a pretty good test."

Facebook has always been known for its innovative culture. From the early days wherein Mark Zuckerberg used to hire people through hackathons (as far as engineers are concerned), the culture still continues. Facebook has been known for being constantly innovative. Back in 2004, when Facebook was ‘the Facebook’ which looked like an ‘ugly’ web page by today’s standards moving on the wall interface in year 2008 followed by the timeline interface (launched in the year 2012) that you see and check every 15 minutes today.

If you want to check the interfaces that came in between, head over to Time’s article ‘This Is What Your Facebook Profile Looked Like Over the Last 11 Years’ 

Having made so many changes in the last few years, some of which have been criticized heavily by the users and even scrapped due to the outcry, it is evident that Facebook is a place of constant innovation.

Innovation isn’t just a pet project. From R&D to human resources, customer service to financial operations, success relies on a constant evaluation of creativity—it’s everyone’s job, all the time. This attitude has been built into Facebook’s DNA from the start.

Talking about Facebook’s office, in an interview on the web show Valley Girl, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook mentions urges the interviewer take a look at the posters and says,

“Our culture is really embodied in these posters. The culture is about doing things, shipping product. So we have these great posters, you know: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Done is better than perfect. We’re 1 percent of the way there.”

These motivational quotes up on the wall have found their way in most of the offices of companies that want their employees to be creative. Being afraid is one major threat to being creative and these posters speak volumes as to what exactly Facebook expects from its employees – to be creative, to be constantly moving forward and to never be afraid.

 It is not just the posters that go up on the walls in Facebook’s office. The walls are also covered with massive art installations. These art pieces compete with three-foot-tall balloons stationed above desks that mark the employees' Facebook anniversaries. Facebook also makes it a point that every time a new employee is hired, a quote is found on the wall that says, "This is your company now. Leave your mark, make an impact."

This acts as a huge boost for the incoming employee who not only feels welcomed but gives his best for the company.

 Facebook even has an ‘artist-in-residency-program' which is known to be among the most innovative corporate art and artist programs anywhere. In an exhaustive interview with Art Business, Drew Bennett, the founder of the program talks about the mission of the program stating “the mission of the program is to create a corporate environment rich in art, and more specifically, rich in a way that positively impacts the work experience.”

Talking about the purpose of the program in an interview with Fast Company, he said, "The mass majority of creativity at Facebook is communicated through the computer, so there isn’t a physical residue that demonstrates all of the creativity that is abundant within this place. By building a program like this, it’s allowing the community that is already engaged in so much creativity to have a reference, a backdrop of their reality, in a more tactile way."

  "The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity." - Alfred North Whitehead

Facebook’s culture of creativity and innovation also allows the employees as well as interns to express themselves. An example of this can be found in one of its motto – “Bring your authentic self to work.”

 It is this motto of the company that has led to innovation coming from the interns. A case in point is of rainbow filter for profile pictures that appeared after the American Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality was created by two interns in their first few weeks, and was adopted by 35 million people.

 In an interview with The Atlantic, Ben Barry, Analog research laboratory founder at Facebook is dubbed as the “Propaganda Minister” of Facebook. The posters that the employees see hanging up on the wall, come from him. Known as the person who ‘packages’ Facebook’s persona, Ben says, "Our culture exists, and I just do what I can to give it physical form and make it tangible. I try to reinforce the things I think are good, and question the things I think aren't. I do approach the work with a strong point of view, and I realize that what I choose to celebrate, question, or ignore has an impact on the culture. I'm not alone in the lab, there are several others who work there in some capacity, and we invite other employees to exercise the same creative freedom on our campus."

 One of the best posters that can be found in Facebook, which was hung anonymously read, "Nothing at Facebook is someone else’s problem." It is a beautiful phrase that instills a sense of responsibility amongst all it employees as it spreads virally throughout the campus.

 What makes Facebook all the more innovative or rather ‘open to innovation’ is the way it looks at failures. A joke floats around in Facebook wherein every summer an intern enters the code base in an effort to implement something new and takes the entire site down.

"If you go nuts every time an intern takes the site down, then you are not fostering an environment of innovation and experimentation.” As has been quoted above, the rainbow filter wouldn’t have been implemented had the interns not been given the creative freedom to innovate.

To take a few more examples of products built by interns & were put into production:

• Creating events from the composer
• Facebook SDK for Android
• Inbox API and Notifications API
• Revamping groups
• Recent Comments filter
• Twitter syndication
• Reducing markup size of Universal Feedback Interface

 Facebook also has a very innovative policy wherein they organize “hackamonth” which allows its employees to work in a different team every month. One could feel it will backfire but it has made employees understand the value of teams and in some cases made them happier about being part of the new team. In some cases, people permanently take a transfer to the new team they were a part of.

For a company that is known for that doesn’t rebukes employees for trying something new but for not trying hard enough, Facebook has embedded the culture of innovation in each and every of its employee. It is evident from the things that have come out of Facebook’s office and we talk about a few of them here.

One example of an idea that came to fruition via a hackathon is FaceBus. Facebook has a shuttle service that transports employees from surrounding cities to work, as well as from one part of campus to another.

The shuttle service has perks for both the business and employees: Since employees don't have to drive to work, they can use the travel time to get some work done. The shuttles are also a greener mode of transportation, and they reduce parking. The only problem was that no one ever knew when the next bus was coming.

During one hackathon, a group decided to tackle that problem. The team wondered, 'Can we put some sort of GPS receiver [on the bus] that would translate where the bus is, and then create an app where employees could track it?' "Before we knew it, FaceBus was born. The idea of these hackathons is to prototype an idea, then work with someone to make it real", says an employee.

One of the things that's really powerful and helps in innovation effectively is a license to fail. When you're willing to tolerate failure, people are willing to do things differently. And if you're not willing to do things differently, you have to do it in a tried-and-true way, which is not innovative.

Because Facebook has engineers working in the middle of the night, for example, the company didn't want to impose a lengthy request process if an employee needed a new keyboard or mouse. A solution the IT department devised was a kiosk placed outside of supply cabinets.

Here's how the new supply procurement system worked: When employees needed a memory stick or a power cord, for example, they scanned their badges, then scanned the item they were taking. They'd subsequently receive an email verifying what they took. A good, innovative idea in theory, Campos says, but employees used the system only five percent of the time.

"Ultimately we decided to turn it off. It was a horrible failure, but my point to the team was not, 'This is a black mark that goes on your record.' It was more like, 'What can we learn from this?' And it was pretty insightful," an employee says.

It is an evolutionary process and there is a lot expected from Facebook in the near future.

Facebook is known for its dynamic and multitudinous ways of engaging the users in the best possible way. Being the most popular social media site, it ought to do so! As its said, anything still in social media it is termed outdated.

Well, let’s take a peek at what Facebook is planning for its users and ways and means to keep them engaged and ‘connected’. The three most talked about trends in Facebook are stated below:

1. Virtual Assistant: Facebook launched its own virtual assistant, Facebook M, to compete with Apple’s ‘Siri’, Microsoft’s ‘Cortana’ and Google’s ‘Google Now’.                            

This innovation is still in its early phase and available to only a few set of users.

Facebook has not only applied the Artificial Intelligence concept in it but in addition to that it has involved the human brain power to judge and analyze. M recommends on the basis of various comparison and peer review sites.

In the future, M would be capable of providing reviews based on its own data rather than relying on other sources.

2. Facebook Live: Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Serena Williams and many other public figures have made the Facebook users tied via the latest Facebook live feature. This feature allows the users to like, share and comment on the live broadcasts of athletes, musicians, politicians and other influencers. The fan following is massive and Facebook live have seem to connect the bond more than ever before.

It’s wonderful to observe how Facebook converts a simple yet eternal desire of the fans to connect to the stars and idols into a real technology base. If creativity and innovation cannot fulfill your wishes, what’s the use of it!

3. Graph Search 2.0: Everything related to Facebook will ultimately come to a single aim, connecting the world. Graph search 2.0 is still in its early phase but the idea that it intends to put through will have a vast impact on technological advancements. People require company in everything they do.

To apply this on technological front, Facebook intends to optimize the data feed of the user and offer them various options as to whom can they look forward to, for example, if they are going for a vacation etc., based on their recent searches and likes. Through this, people can connect more with the ones in the same location or rather interests as theirs.

With the technological advancements specially in the field of artificial intelligence and virtual reality and also with the clear-cut vision of Mark Zuckerberg who, at present connects more than a billion people, it seems the world will look much different by the year 2020. What Facebook is doing is not impossible or unachievable. It’s just that there is no hindrance in the field of creativity and innovation when it comes to Facebook. Ideas and imagination are welcomed. People push themselves to give the best to the society and the world looks upon them as leaders and trendsetters. That is the power of free flowing ideas, the power of creativity, the power of human brain!

“The Greatest Danger for Most of Us Is Not That Our Aim Is Too High and We Miss It, But That It Is Too Low and We Reach It” Michelangelo.