Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin

Driving Innovation

By Deb Blagg

What can a high-flying, high-tech giant learn about marketing from an industry that is about as nuts-and-bolts as you can get? Plenty, if Bonita Stewart (MBA ’83) has anything to say about it. Since joining Google in 2006, the former head of digital marketing at DaimlerChrysler has been helping Google get its approach to consumer marketers up to speed by drawing on her auto industry experience and a previous ten-year stint at IBM.

As Google’s VP-US Sales, Stewart has added finance, media, entertainment, and travel to her initial responsibility for automotive vertical at Google, reported a May 30, 2011 profile in Advertising Age. During her tenure, the search engine company has acquired YouTube, Double Click, AdMob, and Invite Media, and turned Android into the world’s largest operating system. She believes that part of her mandate is to help consumer marketers understand and make the most of the new digital marketplace. “Every day I come to work thinking of myself as someone who can help provide some clairvoyance for brands that are trying to navigate through the complexities of media today,” Stewart said.

Putting her clairvoyance to work, with smartphones now outshipping PCs, Stewart predicted in the article that mobile-optimized Web sites will be the next frontier for consumer marketers who are looking to advance on the competition. “There's the opportunity to evoke emotion and develop a brand through mobile,” she observed.

Reflecting recently on the skills required to lead innovation in any industry, Stewart talked about an inspirational note she received from the School’s legendary marketing Professor C. Roland Christensen during her time as a student at HBS. “It said, ‘Bonita, you have great leadership potential! Don’t ever settle for anything else! Your career will be sharing and successful,’” Stewart recalled. “His note, written in 1983, drives my quest for leadership excellence every day.”