Mo Gawdat is a remarkable thinker and the former Chief Business Officer at Google’s [X], an elite team of engineers that comprise Google’s futuristic “dream factory.” Mo manages Google’s business in over 50 countries with his background as an Engineer, paired with an MBA degree from Maastricht School of Management in the Netherlands.
[X] is Google’s secret innovation lab responsible for many of breakthrough innovations such as Self-Driving cars, Project Loon, Google Brain, among many others. Its approach to radical innovation and moonshots enabled Google to address some of the biggest challenges facing human kind and [X]’s focus on building an innovation factory process resulted in a predictable pipeline of breakthrough inventions and mega size businesses.
Mo joined Google in 2007 and continues to focus on his biggest passion; Emerging Markets and the vast degree of diversity and challenges they face. He is fascinated by the role that technology plays in empowering people in these communities and has dedicated his career towards that passion. Over the years, Mo has started close to half of Google's operations worldwide. Mo serve as the Chief Business Officer and a member of the investment board for Google [X] as of 2013 and contributed significantly to establish the model of operation that is now considered the gold standard in technology innovation around the world, and to land the radical moonshots started as rational successful businesses that are accepted in our day to day world.
Applying his superior skills of logic and problem solving to the issue of happiness, he proposes an algorithm based on an understanding of how the brain takes in and processes joy and sadness. He is the author of “Solve for Happy: Engineering Your Path to Joy” – a book dedicated to his son Ali Gawdat who died in 2014, the book outlines methods for managing and preventing disappointment.
He is also a serial entrepreneur who has cofounded more than 15 businesses in his career. He actively serves as a Board Member in several technology, health and fitness and consumer goods start-ups as well as several government technology and innovation boards in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Considering his vast background, Mo speaks Arabic, English, German as well as some Turkish and Russian.
