A podcast by students of Stanford University's Business and Design Schools


FEATURED INTERVIEW

Monday, March 19, 2007

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google

Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, talks about Google’s industry and competitors, about leading innovation, and career advice.


MP3 File | Subscribe via iTunes | Digg it! | Add to del.icio.us

We caught up with Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google last week and had an interesting conversation about Google’s business and Eric’s views on innovation, entrepreneurship, and careers.

Eric joined Google as Chairman and CEO in 2001 and runs the company in a unique triumvirate along with co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The three of them were recently ranked the #1 most important person on the web by PC World.

Prior to joining Google, Eric was the CEO of Novell and CTO of Sun Microsystems.

Check out this video of Andy Grove asking Eric Schmidt a question:


The videos of the interview are up! Check out this video of the interview:


For the rest of the interview click here.

We received a lot of valuable input and questions for this interview. Special thanks to John Battelle, John Furrier, Om Malik, Philipp Lenssen, Tim O'Reilly, Steve Rubel, and Robert Scoble.

Tune in next week for an interview with Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s List!

- the iinnovate team

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks again for this interview. Still very interesting.

I'm looking forward for others.

Anonymous said...

Excellent job guys!

I will be expecting your coming interviews eagerly.

NickPunt said...

great job, very entertaining.

Ankur Jain said...

Great interview! Thanks Matt and Julio!

Anonymous said...

Excellent interview. I especially enjoyed the "What if you were graduating from business school?" questions.

asdfasdf said...

Very nice. Particularly liked Eric's answer to the last question.

Anonymous said...

Nice interview!! thank you.

Anonymous said...

Great interview! It was really thought provoking.

Thanks Matt and Julio!

Julio said...

Hey everyone, thanks for the very complimentary comments. Would be great to hear if anyone had any specific reactions to the stuff in Eric's interview. Also, any other feedback (especially constructive stuff that we can improve) is always appreciated! We're currently working hard on improving both the audio and video quality and should have some significantly higher output in the next month. Do you all like the two-person intros we've done for the last 2 podcasts? Any guests you suggest we should get (yes, we're hard at work trying to get Jobs, Gates, and those guys, but any other startup guys that are cool we can also try for)

-- JULIO.

Anonymous said...

Julio, I loved teh interview. Two enlightenting parts of the interview were his definition of google as a content supply company and not a content company. Second was his comments on the comparison of the different branches within google. The fact that he lists the legal, finance, and marketing functions as more rigorous and traditional was pretty eye opening to me. Even in a super high growth, "defining innovation" type company, you have to have that solid base.

Anonymous said...

Great questions.

As someone who has done iterviews before - his lack of hesitation seems to indicate the questions were provided in advance and he was prepared by his massive PR team. Could you please bring transparency to this issue?

Thanks.

Julio said...

next google - Am happy to provide some more clarity on the interview. The questions were not provided in advance - actually, I offerred to Eric to provide him the questions in advance but he declined (we find that especially with broad questions on innovation it helps to give the interviewee a chance to think about it first - not so much with current questions about their business). Eric's answers are indeed pretty direct, and he definitely comes across as very eloquent and intelligent (which he is!) but I think that's also a function of the experience of someone that has been a public company CEO for some time. Also, recall that many of these questions are questions that Eric has thought a lot about in the course of his work and has been asked about, so they are topics that he has a very good command of. Oh, and in terms of the "massive PR team" they only knew about the interview after it had already occurred, so no involvement there.

Ajay said...

Very Insightful and thought provoking interview.Keep it up.

maya said...

is there any transcript for the interview? Its quite pain download whole mp3 from my place. Cheers.

Julio said...

Maya,

Unfortunately we don't have a transcript of this interview yet. We actually discontinued the transcripts a few interviews back because the cost was getting a big high (Matt and I have been covering all costs personally) for getting them done and it didn't seem like a lot of people were accessing them.

We are in the process of trying to find someone to sponsor our podcast so that we can obtain at least enough money to cover our costs on equipment and other costs such as transcripts and other incidentals. That is still in the works, but should come through soon!

If downloading the MP3 is difficult, have you tried streaming the audio directly, either through the hipcast audio player on the site or through itunes? I know its not optimal, but is another alternative.

Profoundly Simple said...

This interview is one that CEOs of all technology companies should take to heart. He is uncovering a mystery that seems to have eluded so many. He clearly points out that creativity must be fostered differently than other processes if the company is to excel.

Thomas

Anonymous said...

These comments have been invaluable to me as is this whole site. I thank you for your comment.

Luca Govoni said...

Very interesting. Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Good interview. Fun to see what Google is up to.

Anonymous said...

Always interesting to hear from the CEO of Google. Thanks again for the interview.

Anonymous said...

please, make caption closed for the deaf people...thanks in advance...

Anonymous said...

I found it interesting that the marketing department works through a more traditional model. I could understand finance (I mean, finance has to be traditional, otherwise it doesn't really work) but I thought their marketing would be far less traditional. Although, perhaps, they have to market traditionally because they may not have to really market (that much) on the net; most of their marketing, I suspect, is rather through other applications (such as toolbars etc.) Very interesting interview. Wish we had more CEO's like that.

Anonymous said...

Wow! I envy you guys for having access and passes to talk with lots of excellent and great men in the World Wide Web. Where are you getting your luck and your charm? Kidding aside, the interview was super. I learned a lot and basically I realized that the classics never really lose their impact. I look forward to your interview with the founder of Craig’s List.

Anonymous said...

This is a great site. Thank you for your information. I THANK YOU I SALUTE YOU IT,S A AMZING SITE.

Joan Watson said...

you have to respect any interview with the CEO of Google. Excellent job, thanks.

compras coletivas said...

Thanks again for this interview. Still very interesting.
Excellent interview.