Megan Smith

Friday 13 August, 2021

“Instead of assuming only one group has all the solutions, scout around for those who have already fixed the challenges or have created something promising … It's really about using collective genius. We can get ourselves cross-organized and solve a lot more of these problems faster.”

This week's quote is by an award-winning entrepreneur, engineer, and tech evangelist - Megan Smith

She is currently working as a Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at shift7. shift7 works collaboratively on systemic social, environmental, and economic problems including finding opportunities to scout and scale promising solutions and solution-makers. They add tech-forward, open, and shareable practices to drive direct change together.

She was the third Chief Technology Officer of the United States (U.S. CTO) and Assistant to the President, serving under President Barack Obama.

She was previously a vice president at Google, leading new business development and early-stage partnerships across Google's global engineering and product teams at Google for nine years.

Megan believes that every company has to mindfully design a climate that helps all the employees feel comfortable. When everyone knows that their perspective is equally welcome at the table, we can harness the power of "collective genius". It is a critical approach to sparking innovation in all the facets of business and promoting diversity of thought.

At DDSN we believe that your long-term success is not just determined by what you achieve as a business, but also by how you empower and support your team throughout that journey. We are proud to be bearers of open communication and honesty in our business - brainstorming each project with our team, coming up with new ideas together, and leveraging all the best ideas to find the right approach.

In addition to that, we also leverage new technologies (not necessarily developed by us) to improve our clients' existing business infrastructure. We understand the importance of utilising all the best available technology to achieve a competitive edge and solve problems more efficiently.  


Today's Quote

Graphic depicting Megan Smith and her quote “Instead of assuming only one group has all the solutions, scout around for those who have already fixed the challenges or have created something promising … It's really about using collective genius. We can get ourselves cross-organized and solve a lot more of these problems faster.”


Who is Megan Smith?

Megan Smith is an American engineer and technologist.

She completed her Master's thesis work at the MIT Media Lab. She was a member of the MIT student team that designed, built, and raced a solar car 2000 miles across the Australian outback in the first cross-continental solar car race.

Post MIT, Megan worked at a variety of start-ups, including Apple in Tokyo and General Magic located in Mountain View, California, as product design lead on nascent smartphone technologies.

In 2003, she joined Google, where she rose to the vice president of new business development, leading early-stage partnerships, pilot explorations, and technology licensing across Google's global engineering and product teams.

In 2014, she left Google to become the 3rd U.S. Chief Technology Officer.

After that, in March 2018 she became the CEO and Founder of shift7 which works on tech-forward, inclusive innovation for faster impact on systemic economic, social, and environmental challenges.

Megan was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2017 for leading technological innovation teams and efforts to increase diversity and inclusion in STEM industries both nationally and globally.


DDSN Interactive is a leading web design and development company based in Melbourne, Australia. We have been developing technology to accelerate digital transformation for more than 23 years. During this time we have helped multiple businesses scale and leverage our technology to succeed in their digital projects. We are well versed with digital transformation in sectors like manufacturing, education, associations, and government institutions.

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