First head of Google's Innovation Lab: Here's the No. 1 lesson I taught my co-workers there

Frederik Pferdt helped shape how employees at Google think about the future.

A former Stanford University adjunct professor of design thinking, Pferdt worked at Google for 12 years, serving as its first-ever "chief innovation evangelist." In that role, Pferdt created the company's Innovation Lab and co-founded the Google Garage, where employees across divisions and disciplines gathered to collaborate and experiment on new ideas.

When Pferdt first joined Google, he was struck by the lack of a cohesive structure for fostering innovation across the company, he says.

"I basically observed a need in the organization," notes Pferdt, who says he decided to leave Google in 2022. "Everybody talks about innovation, and you could obviously see a lot of innovation happening. But at the same time, there was no, I would say, 'Google way' to innovate."

The most successful people at the company earned plaudits for their future-facing ideas, so Pferdt worked to teach thousands of other Googlers — from engineers to researchers and designers — how to adopt a "future-ready mind state," he says.

The idea: Being proactive about creating the future you want is better than feeling anxious or uncertain about what's coming. By being open, curious and forward-thinking, you're more likely to spot potential opportunities for yourself, says Pferdt.

"The mind state is really powerful, because it gives you so much control over how you perceive the events in your life," Pferdt says, adding: "If people start to embrace this notion of a mind state, I think they also might have an ability to make better choices [and] see more opportunities."

You can develop this "mind state" by training your brain to embrace six traits, Pferdt wrote in his book "What's Next Is Now: How to Live Future Ready," which published last week:

• Radical optimism: This is the first step to countering anxiety and uncertainty, Pferdt says. To spot future opportunities, you have to embrace the unknown by thinking optimistically to find potential good in a new, possibly even scary, situation.
• Unreserved openness: Human brains can learn and adapt to changes quite well, even if the concept is uncomfortable, research shows. Your openness to that discomfort can help you spot new opportunities, says Pferdt. 
• Compulsive curiosity: Pferdt's own curiosity inspired him to find out how he could help streamline innovation at Google. Humans become less and less curious with age, which makes it a trait you need to actively hone, research shows.
• Perpetual experimentation: Test out ideas, take risks and learn from mistakes. "The only way to make progress is experimenting," says Pferdt.
• Expansive empathy: "Empathy is so crucial for understanding and innovating meaningfully," Pferdt says. Empathy helps you better understand the world around you, and yourself, he adds.
• Your unique "Dimension X": "Every human being has something unique that they use as their superpower," says Pferdt. That's a skill or trait that helps you overcome the biggest challenges in your life.

By focusing on those six traits, you can "train your mind to expect the unexpected," Pferdt says. People who are "compulsively curious" or perpetually experimenting with something can shape their own future — personally, professionally or otherwise — more effectively, he adds.

Curiosity and willingness to experiment are key to long-term success, research shows. Curiosity especially drives people to learn new information and skills, inspires them to be more forward-thinking and can even make them more engaged and happier at work.

"[It's] the secret to igniting the potential the future represents," says Pferdt.

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