The best ideas come from side projects, not design sprints

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 5:49

   on the best ideas that emerged out of labs and even in Google in general, what are some patterns of where the best ideas come from. Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of them, I wish there was an answer in the back of the book where there was one thing. Maybe one observation, Lenny, is they come from a variety of places. So one lesson I've always felt is like you always have to be watching for something that catches your eye.

2. 6:15

   Maybe we come back to that in a second. They very rarely, at least in my experience, have come from design sprints or times where you set aside on a calendar, okay, this is, we're gonna go come up with our next idea. They usually come when people are swimming in the hallway, maybe on a weekend. Often over a break, a lot of our labs teams will be hacking and building on stuff and they just can't help themselves.

3. 6:39

   And they'll come back and they'll share a video and be like, look at this amazing thing. So I think one lesson is like always on alert. Second lesson is like they don't come in conventional places. You can't microwave good ideas. and maybe that leads to a third thing I've seen is sometimes it's about less about the idea and who are the interesting people and more importantly what are their interesting little side projects and passion things and like creating the chemistry around that because usually what we found at least in labs over the last four or five years is that all these ideas whether they're notebook or flow or ai studio or google beam or any of this stuff they get started like very small groups of people who are just obsessed and usually very curious about something and they just won't

4. 7:24

   stop. And so you're kind of like, how do you kind of create a space where that can happen and then kind of be on alert to like catch it and try to like, you know, funnel it, funnel it forward. So what I'm hearing here is interestingly, not like design sprints. I didn't hear brainstorm meetings in there as a place good ideas come from. Yeah. Is there an example maybe because, you know, like someone listening to this, I'm trying to think about what can they take from this to find, to help them find great ideas, say their startup founder or at a big company playing with the latest models. What are some of like the conditions that you find most help?

5. 8:00

   Yes. Yes. I mean, one thing we try to do a lot, and I think this would apply in any of those situations is like, how do you get yourself to the frontier? And that can be both with like playing with the models, but also just watching what are the types of experiences that have just become possible where we have a phrase on the team. We talk about what's almost possible. We just have a list actually where we're trying to track those things. And when one crosses over, it's almost like a phase shift when something goes from like solid to gas or liquid to gas or something. You're like, Ooh, that just became possible. I saw one of these two days ago and I can't stop thinking about it. Are you able to tell us or it's a, uh, maybe soon, but it's like you, kind of, if you're at the frontier playing with the models, watching what's happening,

6. 8:48

   and you kind of have this list, then when you see something, whether it's on X or wherever, then you're like, okay, that just now has become possible. And then we try to think about how do we get a team around that and just go. And so that may be as you're kind of in startup land, if you're thinking, or maybe you're starting to pitch ideas to VCs or whatever, that's kind of how I'd be trying to think about. And then of course, tech alone isn't enough. You've got to kind of match that to an interesting user problem. And ideally, if you can put those together in a way that's so good, people will pay for it. That's kind of the combination of things we start looking for pretty early. So that's an interesting tactic there is make a list of what is almost possible and then watch for, OK, wow, this is now possible. Let's explore this now. Yeah, that's right.

7. 9:35

   Is there anything on that list you can share of things that are not yet possible,