Encouraging Innovation through Limited Resources | A Bit of Optimism #Podcast

As rich as Google is, you're actually not throwing huge amounts of money to small numbers of problems. You're throwing little amounts of money to lots of problems. We use the metaphor of Alexander the Great chopping the Gordian knot. There was a temple and there was a very complex knot that had been tied in front of the temple. And there was a legend that whoever figured out how to untie this knot would take over the rest of Asia. He walked up to this knot, he pulled out his sword and he just sliced through the knot. Some things can't be done in the normal way at all. The temptation is there in all of us to say give me enough people enough money and leave me alone. Let me build it right the first time. We're purposefully not giving them enough money to untie any of the knots they're interested in looking at. That's to force creativity to prevent them from hiring an army of not untiers, metaphorically speaking.