Mo Gawdat

About Mo Gawdat

Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer of Google [X], an entrepreneur, and the author of Solve for Happy.

Mo has an impressive 27-year career, beginning at IBM Egypt as a Systems Engineer before moving into a sales role in the government sector. He later relocated to the UAE, joining NCR Abu Dhabi to work in the non-financial sector. He then became acquainted with the consumer goods industry as Regional Manager for British American Tobacco (BAT). During his seven-and-a-half years at Microsoft, Mo held various positions, eventually leading the communications sector across emerging markets globally.

In 2007, Mo joined Google to help drive its growth in emerging markets. He is fascinated by the role that technology plays in empowering people in emerging communities and has dedicated many years of his career to this passion. Over a six-year period, he helped establish nearly half of Google’s operations globally.

In 2013, Mo transitioned to the company’s infamous innovation arm, Google [X], where he led business strategy, planning, sales, business development, and partnerships. [X] does not attempt to achieve incremental improvements in the way the world works, but instead, it tries to develop new technologies that will reinvent the way things are, and deliver a radical, tenfold (10x) improvements. This leads to seemingly SciFi ideas, such as Project Loon, which aims to provide affordable internet access to five billion people by using high-altitude balloons, and Project Makani, which seeks to revolutionise wind energy generation with autonomous carbon fibre kites, as well as self-driving cars, Google Life Sciences, and many more.

The business team under Mo’s leadership has designed innovative business models analogous to the disruptive technologies [X] creates. These efforts resulted in deep partnerships and global deals that enabled [X] to thrive and build products fit for the real world.