A Healthy Disregard for the Impossible

Nikesh Arora, Chief Business Officer of Google, imparts some wisdom.

His parents were disappointed when he became an engineer instead of doctor, but it turned out to be our advantage. Nikesh Arora’s ten years at Google have been transformative.

He is a laid-back but engaging speaker who opened with a visual metaphor. He showed a photograph of the crowd at the Pope’s funeral in 2005 then showed a recent crowd photo of an equally auspicious even. Rather than the sea of heads you saw a sea of iPads and tablets held aloft to capture the moment.

Ah yes, times have changed. Google is now a verb and personal technology is ubiquitous. In the last five years we’ve seen familiar technology become obsolete, such as DVDs and punch-back TVs. The list goes on. But what’ll vanish in the next five? Books? Cash? Laptops? Arora’s hopes are pinned on iPhones disappearing (insert his mischievous grin here plus my regret). Conversely, there is the question of upcoming innovation. Will wearables advance beyond counting our steps and monitor our health in more meaningful detail? Will we be able to harness and unify the power of collective present technology (1200 smartphones in a crowd) for a greater outcome? Food for thought.

Arora offers three guiding principles for creative innovation that I think are relevant to our world.

First, solve problems without constraints. We are conditioned from childhood to operate within constraints. We need to solve problems from the ground up. Be like Guttenberg, who decided type should be moveable.

Secondly, make the complex simple. Frankly that was Apple’s mantra but Arora’s point was illustrated well by Google search. The vast store of knowledge that is at our fingertips is brought to us through the invisible elegance of powerful search. We take it for granted. Search is evolving. We’l look at a restaurant and Google will instantly verbalize its hours, or tell us the height of a building, or give us a tour of the rooms of a hotel. The information is out there, but the issue was finding it, bringing it together and making it simple.

Third? Serve the world. Think beyond your borders, in every sense of the word. Case in point — phones shouldn’t be on 17 different platforms. It fights faster, greater innovation. His point is to look down the road.

In closing, he shared the thinking behind Chrome which I loved best of all; The world is your school. Go learn.