Post(s) tagged with "svp of happiness"

Why I Like Google’s Reorg and Why It’s Only a Start - Om Malik ⇢

Om Malik takes a look at Larry Page’s reorg at Google and says, ok, that’s fine, but it’s not enough:

He [Page] needs to hire people who challenge Google’s conventional, metrics-driven approach to the world. In other words, Page needs a senior vice president of happiness.

Now this SVP is not a real person, because what I’m arguing for is an ideology and an approach to building the next generation of Google products that focus on “finding” us stuff we want. As I wrote earlier, “they need to think so differently that they need to hire people who are very unlike them,” and what they need are “creatives — the ones who don’t necessarily have computer science degrees.”

As a very creative person with a CS degree, I agree in part with Om. Page needs to do much, much more to shake up the culture of Google, which has been so amazingly social-blind over the past five years.

I know that Om is suggesting the ‘SVP of happiness’ as a thought experiment, a sort of straw man argument, but I think the subtext is right. Page needs to change the culture at Google, and fast.

My bet would be on a social skunkworks, but i have no reason to believe Page is working on that.

10 April 2011 4 Permalink
larry pageom malikreorgsocialsvp of happinesssocial skunkworks

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