[Jez]

Something I read a few months back:

"...The business highlight: here is an anecdote told by Eric Schmidt, the CEO, about how they came up with their world beating online ad system (which is destroying everybody else’s business model of advertising day by day):

“Larry Page was stapling spreadsheet printouts to a whiteboard one Friday afternoon...
...and wrote in larryscript – ‘What’s wrong with these ads?’ The problem was they were not getting enough response. People started writing comments on the printouts as they went past and I thought, that’s interesting. By Saturday night we got an email from a [software] engineer who does not work on the ad side, saying: ‘I have figured out a new algorithm for the ad system and I have implemented it. I hope Larry is pleased.”

It is innovation at a lightning pace, with all the traditional corporate barriers missing, that characterises this company: and the fact that it is innovating in a space it has more or less invented means it is able to branch out unpredictably: there are whole sectors of commerce, advertising, publishing, even online finance that fear their proverbial chips are about to be over-vinegared by some unsuspected invention at Google’s Mountain View HQ. That is what has made Google’s share price do pretty well – and it is not what worries me.

What worries me is Larry Page’s response to this anecdote. Larry, if you have never seen him, can give off an air of public diffidence that is often found among software geniuses and not highly valued among global top 100 executives. Larry simply looked surprised and said “I don’t remember that at all”. Of course the whole double act between “hard-headed Eric” and “genius Larry” is meant partially ironically – but if he really does not remember, and the company’s innovation path is really random, unknowable and ungovernable, that would be a problem..."

The above was taken from an article written by Paul Mason for BBC's Newsnight website. The original page can be found here. And yes, I am of an age in which I like to watch and read Newsnight articles.