Earlier this week Google announced the newest chapter in their development scheme - Google’s Self-Driving Car - that doesn’t include a steering wheel and you don’t even have to drive!
The car features a wealth of high tech gadgets and software including sensors that remove blind spots and can detect objects more than two football fields away in all directions! If that’s not impressive enough for you they’ve also included a simple start, stop button and a screen that shows the route.
The bad news is though; it might be quite some time before we get to ‘drive’ these vehicles here in the UK, as the car is still only at the prototype stage, with Google planning to run a small pilot program in California in the next couple of years according to the company’s blog.
This is yet another bold and innovative move by Google who are vastly notorious for their crafty inventions. First came Google Glass earlier this year in America – the world’s first wearable optical technology; and now one of the first self-driving car to grace the roads of planet earth.
These technology innovations show a thought-provoking relationship between Google’s latest inventions and the concept of Moonshot Thinking – an example of Smart creativity, one of the three marketing trends of 2013.
The essence of Moonshot Thinking is the notion that instead of making a mere, average 10% gain, you can be the one that makes that 10x improvement over what currently exists. It’s about taking the combination of a huge problem, a radical solution to that problem, and finding the breakthrough technology that just might make that solution possible. Think of it as setting yourself an audacious long term goal, deciding on its impact and then mapping out ways to make it happen.
That’s exactly what Google has embodied here with their latest creations in Google Glass and the self-driving car project. They’ve come up with an idea that is perceived as impossible and found the solution, using technology to make it happen; that’s what makes them such great leaders in product innovation.