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Q10: GPS: What is your next ambition? Where would you like to be in 5 years?

Usama Fayyad: In my experience, I have learned that the answer to that question almost always proves to be irrelevant. I can never envision correctly where I would be in 5 years.

If you asked me that question when I was a graduate student, I would have said I'd be a student forever.

Had you asked me that question when I was at NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), I would have answered that writing a couple of deep books with some of the world-renowned scientists that I collaborated with on difficult analysis problems over massive data sets would have been my goal. Instead, I wound up at Microsoft learning all about platforms and stock options!

At Microsoft, I would have predicted that I'd be building the world's most innovative database platform. Instead, I ended up doing a startup.

Two years ago, I would have said I'd be doing startups forever and would have never guessed I'd be an officer in a public company, let alone the biggest internet company in the world! I am truly blessed to have thoroughly and passionately enjoyed all these roles, as I am my current one.

I still would like to get a couple of books out: one technical and one business!