Our goal is not to produce immediate results. We've been tasked with producing long-term results. That means that there's more risk in any individual thing we take on. But we still aspire to a strong return on investment.
— Astro Teller
People text when they're meant to actually be driving. So imagine what they do when they think the car's got it under control.
When you try to do something ten per cent better, you tend to work from where you are: if I ask you to make a car that goes 50 miles a gallon, you can just retool the engine you already have.
I started my second company in 1999. BodyMedia was set up to take advantage of the future of wearables - sensors and computing worn on our bodies in any and all ways that could make our lives better.
It comes up over and over and over again that a ten times increase in the weight-oriented density of batteries or the volume metric, the space-oriented density of batteries, would enable so many other moonshots that that's one that just constantly comes up over and over again, and we will start that moonshot if we can find a great idea.
Making a moonshot is almost more an exercise in creativity than it is in technology.
Without getting into specifics, I assure you we are looking at very substantial opportunities for Loon - Google-scale opportunities.
I personally have a philosophy around authenticity and vulnerability.
Moonshots live in that place between audacious projects and pure science fiction.
VisiCalc and WordPerfect were the killer apps of their day, but Google and Facebook make them look small in comparison.
Here is the surprising truth: It's often easier to make something 10 times better than it is to make it 10 percent better.
If you want to explore things you haven't explored, having people who look just like you and think just like you is not the best way.
If you don't have a tonne of optimism, you're not going to make it... you won't be able to evangelise to everyone else. On the other hand, if you aren't constantly paranoid about what can go wrong and put plans in place, then you're going to get bitten at some point.
The Explorer edition of Glass wasn't for everyone, but the Explorer program pushed us to find a wide range of near-term applications and uses for something like Glass.
Actually, that issue of 'Don't be evil' is probably the number one reason we throw out ideas.
We don't have some message from God that gives us a list of what's good and what's not good. Obviously, we have to make our own flawed judgments about each thing.
If you're shooting to make the world 10% better, you're in a smartness contest with everyone else in the world - and you're going to lose. There are too many smart people in the world.
We need to make sure that the things we are already working on turn out to do the things we believe they can do and creating value both for the world and ultimately for Google.
Moonshot thinking starts with picking a big problem: something huge, long existing, or on a global scale.
It's crazy that you have to tell your phone or your computer or your house or your car 'It's me!' hundreds of times a day. Wearables will solve that problem.
We've got rings, glasses, we wear things for armor, for protection from the elements, to signal our status to other people. And we're going to co-opt a lot of those things, where wearables are going to end up being the interface between us in the world.
Really, having people who have different mental perspectives is what's important.
Really great entrepreneurs have this very special mix of unstoppable optimism and scathing paranoia.
The faster you can get your ideas in contact with the real world, the faster you can discover what is broken with your idea.
When we try to make a car that drives itself, we believe - whether we're right or not - we believe that there would be strong net positive benefit to the world if cars could drive themselves safer than people could.
Use creativity and storytelling as your main muscle instead of smartness.
Rather than thinking of ourselves as a computer, and trying to give you computer-like functionality, it's better to start from the understanding that this is a pair of glasses, and say, 'How smart can we make these glasses for you?'
I believe that the right thing for us to do, as much as we can and without confusing people, is to talk about how we're doing, the things that are going well but also the things that aren't going well.
I'm a father to four kids, so it bothers me that even though our children think big naturally, our society systematically trains them out of thinking that way.
I think wearables in general have, as their best calling, to better understand our current state and needs and to express those back to the world.
I do believe that making a factory for innovation, a moon-shot factory, is possible.
