One of the things that has distinguished market-leading innovators from Amazon to Xerox PARC to Bell Labs is the ability to attract the best and the brightest (more on that topic here). It makes sense that a well-capitalized incumbent can afford to attract world-class talent. But what about a scrappy start-up? How do they do it? In his book In The Plex, Steven Levy shares how Google managed to attract the brightest minds in computer science when it didn’t even have 10 employees. There are important lessons for large organizations here, as well.

“Google’s secret weapon to lure world-class computer scientists: in a world where corporate research labs were shutting down, this small start-up offered an opportunity to break ground in computer science.”

Levy details several accounts of key hires who were lured by Google’s lofty research ambitions. One particularly informative example is of the hire of outstanding DEC researcher, Krishna Bharat, the inventor of the Hilltop algorithm.

“When Google hired Jeff Dean (another outstanding researcher), Bharat was stunned. It was like some basketball team playing in an obscure minor league grabbing a player who was first-round NBA material. Those guys were serious. Soon after, he heard that this just-born start-up, which could barely respond to its query traffic, was starting a research group! It sounded improbable, but he climbed the flight of stairs in the Palo Alto office for an interview. Bharat said straight out that he was skeptical of Google’s research ambitions. From what he could see, there were a lot of people running around with pagers and flicking at their keyboards to keep the system going. ‘Larry, why do you say you want to do research?’ he said to Page. ‘You are such a tiny group!’ Page’s answer was surprising and impressive. Looking at things from a different perspective could lead to unexpected solutions, he said. Sometimes in engineering you look at things with tunnel vision and need a broader perspective. He told Bharat a story about Kodak that involved some seemingly intractable practical problem that was solved by an unexpected intervention from someone in the research division. Page wanted that kind of thing to happen at Google.”

And that, it did. The serendipity that ultimately produced AdSense (which generates more than $10 billion annually) was sparked by the founders’ willingness to allow their very best employees break away from mission-critical operational responsibilities to pursue

“From that point (after a chance encounter in the kitchen, discussing side interests), Harik and Shazeer, two of Google’s best engineers, stopped working on projects related to Google’s overstressed operations (i.e. the mission critical) and began an artificial intelligence project that would've seemed more appropriate in a research lab.”

The implications for a start-up are straightforward enough: you need a world-changing ambition to attract world-leading talent. But for leaders of large organizations, the implications are even more profound. All too often, I hear leaders say, “We can’t afford to let her pursue this random project. She’s too good at her day job…” (actual direct quote from a leader considering an employee with a promising new venture).

I wonder whether the better question is, “Can we afford to NOT let her pursue this side project?”

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