How does a change start? How is innovation generated? It is usually thought that a brilliant idea is needed, and it is true. But even before the idea there is another thing. There is one question. And that question usually revolves around the concept “what would the world be like if…”, which in English translates into “what if…”.
Today the long letter from the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai has come out (small note: Sundar Pichai is the second highest paid CEO in the world, and Google the fourth company by stock market value): it is an important letter because it celebrates Google’s 25th birthday at the end of the month. A quarter of a century is a long time for a company born in a California garage thanks to the intuition and work of two Stanford students.
Many times in recent years we have said that Google was in crisis and that it would not last long: the last one, last November 30, when the artificial intelligence of ChatGPT made its debut. We were wrong.
But let’s go back to the letter: the story of these 25 years reconstructed by Sundar Pichai it is not a story of answersthe more than 6 million answers that the search engine returns every minute in all the languages of the world; it is a story of questions. The questions that the two founders and their team have asked each time before launching a new product, from Gmail to Maps. And these questions all start with “What if…?”, i.e. what would the world be like if this product existed? Obviously in these 25 years there have been also some failures (Pichai mentioned Google Wave)which however we have forgotten because the successes have been many more and more relevant.
Even in our life the questions we ask count, not only to create a million dollar business, but also just to be happy. Ask yourself “What would my life be like if…?” it is the first step to change things.