Gary Flake is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, and the founder and director of Live Labs.

Why you should listen

Gary Flake is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, where he focuses on Internet products and technologies including search, advertising, content, portals, community and application development. In this capacity, he helps define and evolve Microsoft's product vision, technical architecture and business strategy for online services. He is also the founder and director of Live Labs, a skunkworks that bridges research and development, and is widely recognized for inventing new best practices for catalyzing and managing innovation.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Flake founded Yahoo! Research Labs, ran Yahoo!'s corporate R&D activities and company-wide innovation effort, and was the Chief Science Officer of Overture, the company that invented the paid search business model. Flake also wrote the award-winning book The Computational Beauty of Nature, which is used in college courses worldwide.

Gary Flake’s TED talk