Why every company now needs to think and operate like a lab team | Josh Woodward (VP Google Labs)
Josh Woodward, head of Google Labs, Gemini app, and AI Studio, discusses why companies must operate like experimental labs in the fast-moving AI era. He outlines how breakthrough ideas emerge from tracking what is 'almost possible,' why early product-market fit is measured in eye reactions rather than analytics dashboards, and how to know when to kill projects. Woodward also explains why job roles are not homogenizing into generic builders and shares tactical principles for structuring internal corporate labs to avoid common failure modes.
- Josh Woodward looks for high unlearning rates: the speed at which a builder abandons a polished belief when user feedback contradicts it. Read →
- Josh Woodward runs Google Labs with an internal document containing 82 predictions, each beginning with "we believe the future is" or "we predict." Read →
- Tech circles hype a future where software engineers, designers, and PMs merge into a single "builder" role, but Josh Woodward sees the opposite at Google Labs. Read →