Why Google went to Burning Man to find its next CEO

It’s no secret that Burning Man is a stomping ground for tech moguls. The annual counterculture gathering draws rich people and naked hippies under the shared assumption that the future is what you make it.

In his book, Stealing Fire, author and performance expert Steven Kotler explains how the founders of Google — Larry Page and Sergey Brin — used Burning Man as a stage for interviewing the next CEO.

“From the very beginning, Larry and Sergey have been kind of rabid attendees. The centre atrium at Google for years was decorated with pictures of Googlers at Burning Man, spinning fire, doing various things,” Kotler told Business Insider.

Part of what appealed to the duo about Burning Man was the sense of community at its core.

“So one of the things that happens at Burning Man — and there’s recent research out of Oxford that sort of backs this up — is that Burning Man alters consciousness in a very particular way and it drops people into a state of group flow,” Kotler said.

“Flow,” he continued, “is a peak-performance state. It’s an individual performing at their peak. Group flow is simply a team performing at their peak, and everybody has some familiarity with this.

“If you’ve ever taken part in a great brainstorming session, where ideas are kind of bouncing everywhere — you’re really reaching ripe, smart conclusions. If you’ve seen a fourth-quarter comeback in football. ... That’s group flow in action.”

According to Kotler, Google relies on creating group-flow states to get the best work out of their employees.