Quotes from the book “How Google Works”


Smart creatives place culture at the top of the list when considering a new job. To be effective they need to care about the place they work. This is why, when starting a new company or initiative, culture is the most important thing to consider.


The building block of organizations should be small teams. Jeff Bezos at one point has a “two-pizza team” rule – which means teams should be small enough to be fed by 2 pizzas. Small teams get more done then big ones.


To create a success story online: Bet on technical insights that help solve a big problem in a novel way, optimize for scale, not for revenue, and let great products grow the market for everyone.


Today the components are all about information, connectivity, and computing. New inventors have open-source software and abundant APIs that allow them to build easily on each other’s work. S one way of developing technical insights is to use some of these accessible technologies and data and apply them in an industry to solve an existing problem in a new way.


When you base your product strategy on technical insights, you avoid me-too products that simply deliver what customers are asking for. Henry Ford said “If I had listened to customers, I would have gone out looking for faster horses.” That sort of incremental innovation can work very well for incumbents who are concerned with maintaining the status quo and quibbling over percentage points of market share. But if you are starting a new venture, or trying to transform an existing one, it’s not enough.


The fixation to follow the competition leads to a never-ending spiral into mediocrity. If you focus on your competition, you will never deliver anything truly innovative.


We see most big problems as information problems, which means that with enough data and the ability to crunch it, virtually any challenge facing humanity today can be solved.