Balanced Scorecard Google's internal business processes are surprisingly informal for a group of engineers. Rather, Google likes to encourage the creative side of their workers, and so there is an emphasis on projects, even where there is no clear objective at the outset. The company also embarks on projects where there is no clear profit potential -- such is life at a company with $50 billion in the bank. The reality is that Google does all of this because it recognizes the importance of intellectual property in its success. The company hires great people, but then it allows them to innovate and perform, and the internal operations are specifically design to remove constraints to innovation.

On the more conventional side of the business, where Google runs the advertising business that makes all of its money, the company does have more formalized business processes. There is still an element of innovation...

With these processes, Google tries to automate a lot of it, but it also seeks to keep the processes simple for the transactional tasks. These processes might allow Google to collect money, but they are not the drivers of revenue. The innovation and intellectual property are what meet the needs of the end users, meet the needs of the customers and ultimately result in success of the company.
A great measure for the company's processes is the number of new patents it receives. It could be argued that this reflects learning and growth, but at Google the learning and growth perspective is so intertwined with the internal processes that the two are not distinguishable -- innovation is built into the company's processes at a structural level.…