Google exec encourages FLC students to take a leap and change the world

DURANGO - “The world’s a big place. There’s a lot going on. There’s not a better time to be coming out of school and be going out there and tackling some of these problems.”

That was one of the main messages that Doug Daniels, head of Google’s Cloud Platform, offered as he spoke at Fort Lewis College on March 16, 2015. Mr. Daniels’ visit was coordinated by Dr. Paul Clay, FLC assistant professor of management.

The world has problems, but the opportunities to change things for the better have never been more available to those willing to try. Mr. Daniels started a number of his own companies with an eye toward innovation. Most of his attempts failed, he pointed out. One company, however, did succeed and was eventually sold to Google and became Google Maps, which began his involvement with the company.

One of the characteristics of Google that attracts people who think big and want to make the world a better place, like Mr. Daniels, is encapsulated in a quote from Larry Page, who co-founded Google in 1998.

“I worry that something has gone seriously wrong with the way we run companies,” he said. “Incremental improvement is guaranteed to be obsolete over time.”

In other words, many companies focus on making smaller improvements to existing products, essentially doing the same thing they’ve done in the past, just a little bit better. In contrast, moonshot thinking refers to having a bold idea that requires tearing apart what already exists and starting over.

In addition to Google’s own accomplishments, Mr. Daniels pointed to a number of other companies that are changing the world through moonshot thinking, like Tesla, designer of electric cars.

When building an electric car, traditional thinking led many of the big auto companies to simply put the batteries where the gas tank used to be. Tesla, on the other hand, incorporated their batteries into the entire body of the car. This led to different weight and center of gravity characteristics, which in turn led to improved performance.

“That is moonshot designing and taking an old problem and instead of doing a 10x improvement,” said Mr. Daniels, “throwing out those old ideas and starting from scratch.”

Part of moonshot thinking is taking a broader view of the world to gain inspiration from different places. A danger today is thinking one has to focus in one thing to become successful.

Mr. Daniels used a baseball analogy to illustrate this idea. Google doesn’t hire pitchers, he said, a player who specializes in only one aspect of the game. Instead, Google hires athletes.

“We love hiring athletes that can do many different things really, really well. If you specialize in one thing, that’s great, but you’d better specialize in at least two other things.”

A liberal arts environment like the one Fort Lewis College offers is ideally suited to producing intellectual athletes. Within FLC’s liberal arts philosophy, students learn in a system that offers training in a broad range of disciplines. That means engineers who study art and accountants who know psychology, for example.

To learn more about what Fort Lewis College can offer you, visit www.fortlewis.edu/academics. Mr. Daniels’ full talk can be viewed at https://youtu.be/HamyZfXivfI?t=15m10s.