Where would you go?

Remember the question "Who would you like to meet if you could go back in time?” Well, on my way back to meet the likes of JFK, FDR, MLK, Lombardi, Churchill, Larry, Mo, Curley, Jackie Robinson, Lincoln, Adams, Jefferson and Washington to name a few (Hey when you can travel in time for real, I will for real, pick one.) anyway, one stop for me would be to Stanford University year 1996. Goal in mind- would be to meet with two PHD students on campus and discuss their dissertation project titled "BackRub".

See, in 1996 these two ridiculously intelligent people were creating a business model that most would laugh at because it was solving a problem that didn't even exist and creating a business that didn't sell a thing! Not bad for a company that today has over 20,200 employees, $21 billion in revenues, $100 billion in market cap and....yes, ladies and gentleman, their very own word in the English dictionary...

"Google" was first called "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of websites as opposed to the keyword criteria that was common then. Here's the funny thing, that's not what even impresses me about the vision of Sergey Brin and Larry Page. What does; was their ability to measure the immeasurable. By truly valuing much of what other companies take for granted, their people, Google has been able to tap human capital like few have. How so? Well, Google engineers were and are today encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them. What has this passion and talent delivered? Those of you on one of Google's newer services may recognize them, as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense, all originated from setting boundaries but not tasks and allowing people the chance to ask "Why not?"

Take it from Google, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts, can be counted...