CEO Agenda gives distinctive insights into how leaders suppose and lead and what retains them busy in a world of fixed change. We glance into the lives, minds and agendas of CEOs on the world’s most iconic corporations.
Matt Brittin, Google’s president, EMEA, is a flag bearer for management and resilience. He joined Google in 2007 as managing director for the U.Okay., rising by the ranks to his present function in 2014.
Throughout his decade-long time period on the prime of Google in Europe, he deftly weathered public storms round how a lot tax Google paid within the U.Okay., and grew the area’s revenues to a 3rd of Google’s complete income worldwide.
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Rank of Google mother or father Alphabet on the 2024 Fortune World 500.
Brittin is a former Olympian, having represented Crew GB in 1988. And when he can discover the time, he begins his days with a row close to his house in west London.
Forward of Brittin’s departure from Google on the finish of 2024, we sat down with him on the Fortune CEO Discussion board in London.
This interview has been edited for brevity.
Right down to enterprise
Fortune: What international pattern are you targeted on?
AI. It’s the mission of constructing AI responsibly to assist humanity and profit humanity.
It’s essential that we develop it properly. We innovate to go after the largest advantages, however we additionally construct it responsibly.
Should you have been an financial policymaker, what could be your prime precedence?
We want regulation for know-how, and it’s laborious to get it proper. So we’d like guidelines of the street.
Europe’s been on the forefront: a whole lot of items of regulation round digital know-how within the final 5 years, they usually’re all being applied at totally different speeds, in numerous methods, in numerous international locations. However the EU has additionally labored laborious on issues like knowledge safety, GDPR, and the AI Act to attempt to place frameworks.
So, from our standpoint at Google, what’s good is, a minimum of there’s some readability. The problem is that it’s an extremely difficult rule e-book for anyone. We’ve bought the dimensions to have the ability to get attorneys on it, and even for us, it’s difficult.
However think about should you’re a European startup, and this is likely one of the questions that’s been on my thoughts for 18 years at Google—why have we not bought Massive Tech corporations from Europe?
Being productive
What time do you rise up, and what units you up for the day?
I normally rise up between 6 a.m. and seven a.m., and my ideally suited day begins with rowing. I’m not excellent at most sports activities, however I was a rower, and being on the water, normally with another person, allowed me to attach and train, which really units a optimistic tone for my day.
What apps or strategies do you employ to be extra productive?
I really like utilizing NotebookLM, which is powered by Gemini [Google’s AI tool].
You place information into it and ask it to summarize in language even a toddler can perceive. It will probably even generate a podcast that’s fairly convincing. I did that with the Draghi report, which is 328 pages lengthy, and informed the platform to supply me with a podcast protecting the important thing matters in order that I might pay attention whereas operating.
How can European leaders shut the productiveness hole with the U.S.?
The hole is nearly fully about technical innovation and adoption. That’s a wake-up name to European leaders.
We’ve heard leaders like President Macron, and within the U.Okay., Keir Starmer’s authorities, eager to harness know-how for good. There’s a second the place political leaders can say, “Hang on, we’re getting this wrong. We need rules of the road, but we also need to make sure we’re in the race.”
The regulation challenges are important, however the potential is huge. We simply noticed the Nobel Prize awarded to 2 of my colleagues [Demis Hassabis and John Jumper] for his or her big breakthroughs in drug discovery, illness analysis, and enzymes utilizing AI. And there’s rather more coming.
Getting private
Who’s in your “personal board”?
What I’ve tried to do all through my profession is have an off-the-cuff community of those that I can flip to. I feel should you say to someone, “Will you be my mentor?,” it’s a bit like asking for marriage on a primary date. However should you say, “Listen, I’m wrestling with something, can I come and ask you how you’ve dealt with it?”
What e-book have you ever learn, both just lately or prior to now, that has impressed you?
Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker. You probably have younger youngsters, don’t learn it. However in any other case, I feel it helped me set up a basis for productiveness, which is, should you don’t take care of sleep, you then actually are in bother.
CEO Agenda gives distinctive insights into how leaders suppose and lead, and what retains them busy in a world of fixed change. We glance into the lives, minds and agendas of CEOs on the world’s most iconic corporations. Dive into our different CEO Agenda profiles.
