Classes started last Thursday, and I am not sure about my classmates, but I feel like I am drinking out of a fire hose. Stats, Econ, Accounting, Marketing, ACT Groups, Parker, clubs, Amazon Case Competition... WO. Even though it has been a little stressful, it's been a great week! Outside of class, on Monday, Google came and did their company presentation, it was pretty exciting. To follow that up, Amazon was here on Tuesday.
Later that night, after the Amazon presentation, just a couple miles away from campus, Google's Executive Chairman and former CEO, Eric Schmidt, and former Senior Vice President of Products at Google, Jonathan Rosenberg (currently serving as an advisor to Google CEO Larry Page), spoke to a small group of about 200 people. A few of my fellow Anderson classmates and I were lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend and listen to them speak.
It was a fantastic experience! They gave the audience a pretty unique prespective of Google, and also some great general leadership insights as well. One of the things that stood out to me most was when Eric Schmidt spoke about "thinking 10X." To quote from Eric and Jonathan's book, How Google Works,
"Too many people are stuck in the old, limited mindset... 'Think 10X' – helps fix that. It encompasses the art of the possible... and the impossible."
"The obvious benefit of thinking big is that it gives smart creatives much more freedom. It removes constraints and spurs creativity. Astro Teller, the head of Google[x], notes that if you want to create a car that gets 10 percent better mileage, you just have to tweak the current design, but if you want to get one that gets five hundred miles per gallon, you need to start over. Just the thought process - How would I start over? - can spur ideas that were previously not considered."
This was just one of the many golden nuggets of wisdom Eric and Jonathan shared. It was very inspring. There aren't many other cities where you would have the opportunity to be less than 30 feet away from and get to hear such influential business leaders. Definitely one of the many perks of being in LA. You can check out the interview in its entirety here.
- James Huntington, MBA '16
Follow me on Twitter @jhuntington14 and UCLA Anderson @UCLAMBA
