Kelly talks Yes, And with Dr. Frederik Pferdt, Google’s first Chief Innovation Evangelist. He founded Google’s Innovation Lab, where he trained tens of thousands of Googlers to develop cutting-edge ideas and taught groundbreaking classes on innovation and creativity at Stanford University for more than a decade. His new book is called “What’s Next is Now: How to Live Future Ready.”  

Of course, I was pleased that you talk about “Yes, And” quite a bit in the book. 

“There is this power when you say ‘yes,’ that it takes you on an adventure, right? And I think, for me, ‘yes’ and ‘yes, and’ is really inviting us to embrace possibility. It encourages us to build on what exists and imagine what could be. And that is something very powerful, right?” 

And organizationally, this work is needed if you want your people to go beyond what’s already been done. 

“Helping people to just get to a ‘yes,’ and then maybe go beyond that, go to a ‘yes and’ – and you have been at the forefront of that – if you go to different organizations like the FBI or other organizations, and you’re trying to really teach them the benefits of this approach that really leads to possibilities that leads you to momentum. Where it shifts us from a place of limitation to a space where innovation and creativity can really thrive. It’s that fuel that drives us toward a future we actively then shape.” 

I was fascinated that you said that you always thought you would discover a specific “Google way” – but there wasn’t one. 

“After these 18 months in, in all of those offices around the world, I discovered there is no specific way, right? It’s not that one team had a specific environment and a process, and some some more resources than others. It was specifically the mind state people were in. They had a very specific optimistic outlook on the future. And what I discovered is that they’re also very open: open to new ideas, to new perspectives. They really tapped into their curiosity, asking big questions like, What if or why not, right? And those are very powerful questions to ask.” 

Photo Credit: Aaron Wojack