Google And Niantic Labs PDF Download

The case study focuses on the entrepreneurial career of John Hanke, a 1996 MBA graduate of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and a professional entrepreneur. While the cases central storyline centers on whether Hanke should spin-out his most recent venture an entity called Niantic Labs that develops augmented reality (AR) games for use on smart phones from Google in early 2015, there are multiple subplots that make this a potentially discussion-rich case for classroom use: (1) How the different components of the Culture of Innovation ecosystem in the San Francisco Bay Area impacted Hankes career, starting from the time when he first enrolled at Berkeley-Haas in Fall 1994 up to his current situation now; (2) How he successfully created several start-ups before Google acquired his third one, Keyhole, an 3-D online mapping company, in 2004 and then rebranded it as Google Earth; (3) How he was able to scale-up Googles Geo-products division over an eight-year period and within a large corporate setting by applying the concepts of lean start-up, open sourcing, and open innovation that led to the eventual creation of Google Maps and Google Street View; and (4) The importance of time and place, which demonstrates how Hanke, as a successful and experienced entrepreneur, foresaw the intersection of multiple converging technology trends, including the increased power of handheld computing, digital graphics, space-based imagery and geo-location with the ubiquitous use of mobile devices and the possibilities of new and related online products, services, and other forms of social interaction.