Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!
Larry PageRead
Excellence matters, and technology advances so fast that the potential for improvement is tremendous. So, since becoming CEO again, I've pushed hard to increase our velocity, improve our execution, and focus on the big bets that will make a difference in the world.
Interpretation
Striving for excellence is crucial, especially in a fast-evolving technological landscape.
In this quote, Larry Page emphasizes the importance of excellence in the rapidly advancing field of technology. He highlights his efforts as a CEO to work towards increasing the pace of innovation and making impactful decisions, indicating that with the right focus and execution, significant improvements can be achieved that positively affect the world.
In practice
This quote can be used in a keynote address at a technology conference to inspire innovation.
Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!
Technology should do the hard work, so you can get on and live your life. We're only at one percent of what's possible, and we're moving slow relative to the opportunity we have.
Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future. I try to focus on that: What is the future really going to be? And how do we create it? And how do we power our organization to really focus on that and really drive it at a high rate? When I was working on Android, I felt guilty. It wasn’t what we were working on, it was a start-up, and I felt guilty. That was stupid! It was the future.
Always deliver more than expected.
You don't need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.
I like going to Burning Man, for example. An environment where people can try new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What's the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world.
It wasn't very long ago when you wouldn't even think about there being health information on the smartphone. There's financial information. There's your conversations; there's business secrets. There's probably more information about you on here than exists in your home.
No matter how deeply disturbing the thought of using the environment to manipulate behavior for national advantages to some, the technology permitting such use will very probably develop within the next few decades.
Languages evolve; ideas blend together. In computer technology, we all stand on others' shoulders.
Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge.
Our goal is to make the best devices in the world, not to be the biggest.
When I wrote 'The World Is Flat,' I said the world is flat. Yeah, we're all connected. Facebook didn't exist; Twitter was a sound; the cloud was in the sky; 4G was a parking place; LinkedIn was a prison; applications were what you sent to college; and Skype, for most people, was a typo.
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