Directly from the Silicon Valley in California - USA

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about his visit to the Silicon Valley and explains the importance of using project management as a success factor in the companies he visited. He also talks about the need for a good basis for study, innovation and competence of people that are working in these companies.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes PM podcast today. I like to share with you my day at the Silicon Valley. It's really interesting. I decided to do there's one day to day, trying to understand them, to help myself to understand what's going on here and how this people can produce such an amazing group of companies. I started my trip crossing very quickly to the Twitter headquarters here in San Francisco.

And it's so interesting because it's an a, it's a new startup. A company is extremely powerful and they have a very small office compared to them with the audit companies that I have visited. But it's interesting. It's interesting to see how they are giant or how they are looking. They're not struggling with the growth, but they are struggling a little bit with the business model that they can handle to raise valuing, to give back to the manager. So how to transform how old is a powerful network that its to either to a profitable business and a very profitable business.

So this was a farm, very interesting. Moving up. I went to Pixar in Emeryville and also the Berkeley university. And it's amazing. It's amazing big, sir. It's a big and he looks quite funny, but it's extremely close that they keep that confidential. You let the aspect's on the top. All of their minds, big Sur and I know Apple, the two companies may be dizzy is the Steve jobs mind? These are extremely confidential, no information, no visitors, nothing.

And it's interesting because they can keep this, but I could watch people going in and moving out in a very informal way by bike or walking with their dogs. And he eats very, very open environment. And I saw this in all companies here at the Valley. After that, I went to Berkeley, Berkeley, why a visit to the, to universities Berkley in the morning and Stanford, because for sure the roots of all this line of thinking in this control behavior comes from this university's and the have a great, not empowering and given technical knowledge to these people, but also opening their minds to new challenges, the innovation and their ability to transform innovations into great results.

This where in the top of the mind of all professors and now students, I was there. It was amazing. You can see on my flake, the album, the picture that I took it to us, the day that they were celebrating the new graduates students. So it was very happy environment and very open. And if we can see people from all over the world, people, cultural aspects, knowledge countries. So it's a very diverse group in this diversity brings a lot of after that, I returned it back to you Francisco, and that went down to the Valley and then I cross it or a car.

And it's an amazing their headquarters. It's one of the most beautiful headquarters I have ever seen with a Lake. Very open, very bright. And this guy is, is a huge Exxon all displaces of a various, you open the environment for creation, for people to join. So free areas like a university, not like an office. Okay. Not like, and the traditional office. After Oracle, I went down to Palo Alto. I visited the Facebook and the Facebook.

It's maybe the happiest of my, and I'm guessing maybe the happiest place I have visited the yesterday. And it was really, really amazing because the people, they, they say hello to you, that they walked through you and very informal. It's like a group of people playing and not working hard and seriously do your plane. So it's very interesting. If we watch that social network, if you have orchard the social network movie, it looks pretty like the same.

It's very open, very charming and very informal environment. Then grow in very fast. After this, I went to Cupertino to visit the mothership. It's like the call, the Apple campus. And that is, this is like pre like a fortress. It's amazing. It's a loop with six buildings and all the, the buildings they face to square in the middle. And this is where it's not open to the public. So the public cross only outside and outside what we can see, it's only brick windows and nothing else, nothing.

It's amazing. It's completely different from all other companies. I've visited yesterday. All the other companies, very, very, nobody talks. I don't know anything. So it's very, the confidentiality it's looks like Pixar. So the confidentiality. And it's amazing to see how great products, the most valuable company in the it sector. And it's a, just multiple, this is not a huge place. And it's very fast. Interesting. You can check on the pictures. And also on the video that I did there, after that, I went to Mountainville to visit Google, Google.

It's not a very open it's look like campus. It's a big, big, we see people drive in their Google bikes that they have the Google caller's and Google bikes. And we see people playing table tennis and talking in a very free or very open, no angry face, nothing. We see people's modeling. I went, yeah. When the people were living. So it was very happy to see people going out and from all over. We see people from India, from middle East.

We see people from Africa everywhere, walking to Gary, it's a very diverse group and very creative. And everybody smiling is a very good environment for working. And then I finished my visit in Stanford. It looks like I drove a thousand miles, know all displaces. We are almost together. Something like five miles, 10 miles away, one from each water. And it's amazing. It's amazing because we are talking about, if we add up all this company's we are talking about a trillion dollar, a trillion dollar market companies in 90 sector in a very small amount of land.

So it's so interesting. And then returning back to Stanford to close this open, to trying to understand. So I spent about an hour walking Stanford, look into the face of the people, visit in their library. And it's amazing how this universities, they're not only empowering given technical knowledge, but they are allowing people to think differently and to use innovation, but to use an innovation, we approach it management approach.

What I am telling you this Berkeley has a great program in product management and Y because innovation alone, doesn't, Valley the money, but innovation to together with good protocol implementation does, will deliver success. Having an idea of creating a school engine to find things on the web. This is great, but transform this in Google does this more than grate. This is extreme a professional project management.

So I enjoy it really very much. I invited everybody to do what I did yesterday and talk to me. And then I recorded this podcast and like to call the pictures, just to share this with those who do not have the opportunity to visit. It's really amazing. Make everybody think a lot about the future and think a lot about what kind of innovation we want for the future. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy this podcast and see you next week with another five minutes to be on podcasts.

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