Making Innovation Recession-Proof

METALLIC NOISE

>> -- You know, what's the economic recession done to drive innovation or stifle innovation? Do you see any difference from a few years ago?

>> I actually concur with Polly. I think that when you're kind of lean and the economic climate is not as great, I think that it actually requires the company or the organization to look kind of deeply inside and say, "What are my assets? What are my advantages? What are my disadvantages?" and really try to optimize all the things that you have and actually really relook at all those things that are going for you to leverage. Secondly, I see that more and more companies are -- you know, there are a lot of large companies who become really siloed in their own culture. So they?ll say, "We've customized all of our codes; we've customized all of our marketing processes; no one else could do this for us except for us." And I find then that in times of kind of, you know, economic pinch that you tend to become a little bit more porous, trying to create bridgeways with your partners. So when I was at Baby Center, which is about a hundred-person company, and, and I was talking to Polly about this, that when a recession started to hit about a year and a half ago, that we really, kind of, made sure that, working with sales force, that we were optimizing every possible advantages of that particular kind of partner relationship. And instead of looking at everybody as a vendor, you really look at it -- this sounds like a corny thing -- but you really look at who could I really, truly partner with and leverage each other, so that you can actually bet on each other, on your future, opposed to "I'm going to treat this, you know, company as a vendor," per se, or the fact that, you know, Yahoo went through a reiteration where when, when they were kind of going through the roof in stock in value, it was almost like, "I'm going to sit here and I'm going to have you all come to me," versus when we went through the economic -- you know, when we went through the downturn in 2001, 2005, I think there were a lot more, kind of, reaching across the aisle to see what kind of collaboration can you do. And by that I think that you are quite changed internally about looking at your business from sales force point of view, giving you a fresh look at your own organization and vice versa.

>> Okay, okay. Marissa, what about at Google? I mean, what do you ? what -- your founders have been very active, obviously, in the national political situation and just -- what do you guys see on the horizon from an innovation perspective that might allow us to start to come out of the economic recession?

>> Well, there's never a recession on innovation. inaudible

>> That's a good point. laughs

>> And I think that, you know, for us, we really think about innovation being based on the technology, and technology is always based on people. And right now there's no shortage of good people and good ideas out there, either on the job market looking for, for a job or starting a company that might be acquired. And I think one of -- one perspective is to look at some of the really strong companies that exist today: McDonald's, Apple, Krispy Kreme -- all of them started during times of economic recessions. And one theory on that is that, you know, startups have to work that much harder or pitch that much better to, to venture firms during those periods of time, so a lot of times, these types of recessions give birth to a lot of really interesting innovation and really healthy companies.

METALLIC NOISE

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