Making Delivery Drones a Reality at Alphabet

When X$-$the division of Google's parent company Alphabet$-$launched a team to work on delivery drones, they could have recruited members with some attention$-$grabbing words: How would like to work on a team where you'll be sending burritos into the sky$?$ They didn't have to resort to a sales pitch like that, though, since being a part of this team was interesting for other reasons. It was a team that was given the freedom to work on a creative project separate from the rest of the company while using cutting$-$edge technology and plentiful resources. And they didn't have to show profitability right away. $791$

This team, called Project Wing, consisted of a combination of researchers, business strategy experts, engineers, and developers. An early goal for the team was to deliver defibrillator kits to heart attack victims. For the first year of the team's work, members worked on a design for a delivery drone. They didn't want the drones to have to land on the ground and then have to use a lot of power to get back into the air, so they tried to figure out a way to deliver packages while the drones hovered in the air.

It turns out this was no easy task. They had thought that packages could be lowered to the ground by a cord that would unspool from the drone while it hovered. The problem was that every package seemed to need its own system. They tried numerous other designs that didn't work until finally they came up with a system involving hooks.

Another challenge for Project Wing was air traffic management. The team initially worked on building each drone its own path in the sky from its launch to its destination. Sounds good if only Project Wing drones were in the sky$,$ but what about airplanes? Members of Project Wing had to work closely with regulators as well as competitors to avoid crashes with other "flying objects." This kind of relationship building was not something in which project employees had experience. $792$

For the first test launches, bottled water and batteries were delivered to farmers in Australia. By Fall $2017,$ drones were making deliveries to homes in rural Australia where people otherwise had to drive long distances to buy groceries. Using an app, customers could order products from a pharmacy company, or they could order burritos from a restaurant called Guzman y Gomez. In $2018,$ Project Wing drones were working on deliveries in more densely populated areas.

The project team reached a milestone in July $2018.$ They "graduated" from being a team within X to being an independent business owned by Alphabet. $793$

Discussion Questions

$13-11.$ Which of the team types apply to the Project Wing team?

$13-12.$ How might different group development stages apply to this team? In your answer, note how making changes to the drone design might have impacted the stages of group development.

$13-13.$ What kinds of conflict do you think might have occurred at different points described in the case? Why or why not were these kinds of conflict effective for the team?

$13-14.$ How did the "external conditions imposed on the group" $($see Exhibit $13-3)$ help or hinder Project Wing?