Marissa Mayer speech at Stanford on innovation at Google (23 minute speech, 26 minutes of question and answers). She leads the product management efforts on Google’s search products- web search, images, groups, news, Froogle, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer. Excellent speech. Highly recommended. Google top 9 ideas:

(inside these are Marissa’s thoughts) [inside these are my comments]

1. Ideas come from anywhere (engineers, customers, managers, executives, external companies – that Google acquires)
2. Share everything you can (very open culture)
3. Your Brilliant We’re Hiring [Google Hiring]
4. A license to pursue dreams (Google 20% time)
5. Innovation not instant perfection (iteration – experiment quickly and often)
6. Data is apolitical [Data Based Decision Making – common errors in interpreting data – read the related links too]
7. Creativity loves Constraints [process improvement and innovation]
8. Users not money (Google focuses on providing users what they want and believe it will work out)
9. Don’t kill projects morph them

So far every time I hear one of Google’s leaders speak I am happier that I own a bit of stock – this is another instance of that.

Related: Technology Speakers at Google – Google’s Page urges scientists to market themselves – Innovation at Google – Amazon Innovation – Science and Engineering Webcast directory – Engineers – Career Options