Google has succeeded by innovating again and again. Their secret? They don’t tell their employees how to innovate; they manage the chaos. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google since 2001 and now chair of parent company Alphabet, shares the controversial management techniques he created to lead an environment of free-flowing ideas — and the disciplined decision-making that helps to make a breakthrough idea into a profitable product. He reveals the secret to Google’s former “20% time” policy, their approach to hiring smart creatives, and the parallels between leading Google and piloting small aircraft. Plus, his “roommate” at Google, and the decision he made to support a crazy idea that he was certain would bankrupt the company. Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/eric-schmidt-innovation-managed-chaos/ Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribe See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you’re Steve Jobs, you can wait for your product to be perfect. For the rest of us, If you’re not embarrassed by your first product release, you’ve released it too late. Imperfect is perfect. Why? Because your assumptions about what people want are never exactly right. Most entrepreneurs create great products through a tight feedback loop with real customers using a real product. So don’t fear imperfections; they won’t make or break your company. What will make or break you is speed. And no one knows this better than Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. He shares the origin story of his mantra “move fast and break things” and how this ethos applied as Facebook evolved from student project to tech giant. Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.com Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribe See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.