Decoder with Nilay Patel cover image

Rewind: How big companies kill ideas — and how to fight back, with Tony Fadell

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Alphabet - How to Make Individual Operating Units

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Summary

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Episode notes

Alphabet had the right intentions, but it did it with the wrong business units. The same thing happened to Sony. What you want is those ones that are fully formed go out in the wild and make them much more resilient by making them either public companies where they have to try to survive by themselves.

This episode was originally published on May 3rd, 2022.

Tony Fadell was instrumental in the development of the iPod and iPhone at Apple and then co-founded Nest Labs, which kicked off the consumer smart home market with its smart thermostat in 2011. Tony sold Nest to Google for $3.2 billion in 2014 and eventually left Google. He now runs an investment company called Future Shape.

Links:

Inside the Nest: iPod creator Tony Fadell wants to reinvent the thermostat

General Magic - Trailer

Inside Facebook’s metaverse for work

Silicon Graphics

Google is reorganizing and Sundar Pichai will become new CEO

Fire drill: can Tony Fadell and Nest build a better smoke detector?

Google purchases Nest for $3.2 billion

Twitter accepts buyout, giving Elon Musk total control of the company

Nest is rejoining Google to better compete with Amazon and Apple

Apple Music Event 2005 - Motorola Rokr E1 / iTunes Phone

Activision Blizzard hit with another sexual harassment lawsuit

Nest buying video-monitoring startup Dropcam for $555 million

What matters about Matter, the new smart home standard

ZIGBEE ON MARS!

Directory:

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple

Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel

Pat Gelsinger, current CEO of Intel

Sundar Pichai, current CEO of Alphabet

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company

Jeff Williams, COO of Apple

Matt Rogers, Nest co-founder

Jeff Robbin, VP of consumer applications at Apple

Steve Hoteling, former CEO gesture recognition company Finger Works

Jon Rubinstein, senior VP of the iPod division at Apple

Steve Sakomen, hardware engineer and executive at Apple

Avie Tavanian, chief software technology officer at Apple

Scott Forstall, senior VP of iOS software, Apple

Jony Ive, chief design officer, Apple

Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/22817673

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

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