picture-7The American journalist Charlie Rose has recently interviewed a series of influential people in the technology industry.  They include Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google), Marc Andreesson (Founder of Netscape), Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon), Evan Williams (co-founder of Twitter), Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) and Marissa Mayer (VP of Search and User Experience at Google).

They are fascinating conversations about the future of technology and the rise of social/business networking.

I found Marissa Mayer’s conversation with Charlie particularly intriguing.  Marissa Mayer is 33 years old and is already the Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google. She is the very powerful a gatekeeper who she determines when or whether a particular Google product should be released to users.

Google gives all employees 1 day a week to explore their own ideas.  People have carte blanche and can investigate whatever technologically-related ideas fascinate them and there is no interference by the company.  It turns out that over 50% of Google’s new products have come from that 20% free-for-all time.  Marissa Mayer said, ‘When you take really smart people and give them really good tools, they build amazing things.’

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