Top Highlights

• Knaves prioritize the individual over the team; divas think they are better than the team, but want success equally for both. Knaves need to be dealt with as quickly as possible. But as long as their contributions match their outlandish egos, divas should be tolerated and even protected. Great people are often unusual and difficult, and some of tho...
• It’s a matter of numbers: A new venture within a big company won’t be able to move the bottom line enough, so the tendency is to say, “Why bother?” It almost always looks like a better use of capital (and certainly less risky) to invest in the core business than in something that’s highly speculative and not likely to contribute in a meaningful way...
• When it comes to evaluating where to create autonomous units, this is the primary thing we look for: not a business strategy or financial model (although those are necessary), but a strong set of technical insights.
• Smart creatives, though, place culture at the top of the list. To be effective, they need to care about the place they work.
• When Sergey and Larry founded Google in 1998, they had no formal business training or experience. They considered this an advantage, not a liability. As the company grew out of its first home in a Stanford dorm room, to Susan Wojcicki’s garage9 in Menlo Park, to offices in Palo Alto and then Mountain View, the founders ran it on a few simple princi...