Google's CEO talks about innovation, competition, and Google

In this video interview with James Manyika of McKinsey, Google's Eric Schmidt talks about everything from competition, to innovation, to global issues surrounding the future of the internet.

A few highlights:

Schmidt starts off his view of the future, asking the question: "If people have infinitely powerful personal devices, connected to infinitely fast networks, connected to infinitely fast server rooms... What will they do?" His take: these super devices will allow the consumer to make decisions easier and faster, fundamentally change how companies market to consumers, and considerably speed up the rate of change in the world. No matter how powerful, he notes, they won't replace human insight.

In his interview, he stresses that while marketing to the long tail can be profitable, catering to the 'head' is still important. In fact, contrary to some of Chris Anderson's work, he believes that hits will become Super Hits as a result of the global reach of the internet.

He also talks about management at Google and how critical it is to keep an open, loosely organized culture to sustain innovation, avoiding siloed divisions. He also stresses the importance of deadlines to get things done ("otherwise you're a University"), and views created crises as tools to get through the knothole. (Hmm... crises that are artificially created? Crazy deadlines? Sounds like InOneWeekend!)

His take on work-life balance? There is no balance. Executives that will do really well in his view love the crises.

Probably most interesting are his comments about policing the internet and the potentially tragic balkanization of the internet. Different countries have different laws... how do we stay connected without building police states around our internets?

To see the video of McKinsey's whole interview with Eric Schmidt, click here: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Googles_view_on_the_future_of_business_An_interview_with_CEO_Eric_Schmidt_2229?pagenum=1#interactive_google_schmidt