Google exec urges entrepreneurs to be ‘different’

MANILA, Philippines – Businesses, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), were advised to do things “differently” to be ahead of the competition, an official from tech giant Google said during one of the sessions at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit this week.

Barbara Navarro, Google’s head of operations and strategy for public policy at Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and Russia, told the audience that entrepreneurs should always strive to approach things in a different way but for the better.

She cited for example how the global tech company came up with with its search engine or its e-mail products. They were not the first of their kinds but they were done in a different way, she said.

“Let’s take the search engine, probably our most popular product, for example… They (Google) decided to focus on this because they thought they can do something in a different way, maybe make it faster, maybe make the results show in less than one second, maybe (have) broader scope,” Navarro said.

“It was not the first time someone came up with this (product) but they (Google) were looking at this in a completely different way,” she said.

Navarro also said how the company passes on its “passion” in doing things differently to its employees through “20 percent time” or by giving them free time to think about projects or problems outside of their own work.

“Googlers spend 20 percent of their time per week trying to come up with a project, with a problem that can change the world. It’s as ambitious as that,” Navarro said.