by Jackie Cameron
Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, is the strategic thinker and public face of one of the world’s most powerful companies and strongest brands. He didn’t create Google, but he has played the lead role in ensuring it keeps growing and diversifying its product range since he joined the technology giant in 2001.
On Schmidt’s watch, Google has launched a range of offerings that many now take for granted as part of everyday life. To name a few: Gmail and Google Scholar in 2004, Google Maps in 2005, Google Translate in 2006 and Google Drive in 2012. He has presided over a wide range of shrewd acquisitions. Take these early purchases: Keyhole in 2004, which became Google Earth a year later, and YouTube in 2006.
All that was just the tip of the iceberg for Schmidt. Google started out, as its mission statement says, with an aim to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. However, it has expanded its ambitions to take stakes in the boom industries of the future. Self-driving cars and wearable technology like Google Glass are among the many headline-grabbing advances set to change life on earth that Google is leading.
Not everyone is happy about Google’s ever-expanding spread across the global economy. For example, Google is investigating ways to disrupt the investment industry. And Schmidt’s 2015 goal could make more people tremble: “More crazy ideas this year than last #workresolutions.”
With Google’s ability to successfully roll out technological innovation on a grand scale, it is not surprising that the man at the helm is closely followed by Captains of Industry who make the annual pilgrimage to Davos. Schmidt, one of six co-chairs who will steer discussions at the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Annual General Meeting, has not far off 1m people looking out for his periodic pearls of wisdom on Twitter (@ericschmidt). About 350 000 followers keep up-to-date with Schmidt’s thinking through Google+.
In conjunction with BrightRock, we have taken to sharing the stories from our recently published World Economic Forum starter pack, ‘A Veterans Guide to Surviving Davos’ PDF with you – To download the full document, follow this link.
