Patrick Copeland, Google Dir of Engineering; Saved Google 700 engineering years

Patrick Copeland is passionate about delivering innovation and building and improving world-class products. As Senior Engineering Director at Google, he created and leads the Engineering Productivity Group. Patrick has over 15 years of experience in software development and testing. He's worked on a broad range of software products and services. During his 11 years at Microsoft he led testing and engineering teams that created real-time micro-operating systems, implementations of XML and cloud search systems.

Since starting at Google in 2006, Patrick is responsible for a group of 1K engineers in 25 countries. His team develops innovative engineering tools, systems, and process that provide a competitive advantage for Google. His goal is to accelerate Google and save time that can be used for innovation. There are several sub-teams that make up this division: Engineering Tools, Release Engineering, Test Engineering, Internationalization and several others.

He received a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern California and a BS in the same area from the University of Arizona.

Presentation: "Opening Keynote: Innovation at Google"

Time: Wednesday 09:20 - 10:20

Location: Metropolitan Ballroom

Abstract:

There are many paths to innovation. At one extreme, we have large companies who create research labs, staff them with world-class Ph.Ds, and set them working for years to solve extremely complex technical problems. At the other extreme, we have the proverbial "two entrepreneurs in the garage" working on a shoe-string budget. Between these two extremes, we have all sorts of combinations of organizational structure, team size, budgets and time horizons.

History shows that world-changing innovation is possible through all of these paths. But history also shows that, as companies grow in size and reputation, they almost inevitably become more conservative and risk-averse when it comes to considering, and investing in, new ideas and disruptive technology – often with disastrous results.

In this presentation, Google's Senior Engineering Director Patrick Copeland will introduce three basic models for innovation: Top-Down, Democratic and "eXtreme". He will describe how Google's core beliefs, culture, organization and infrastructure have successfully encouraged and enabled Democratic innovation throughout its growth. He will conclude by presenting and discussing "Unleash the Innovators", a practical manifesto and manual to stimulate and leverage eXtreme Innovation in any organization.