Google Ideas is ramping up its New York presence

Think/Do Tank is advertising for job candidates.

Jared Cohen in 2007. Image Credit: Washington Life Magazine

With the purchase of its New York home behind it, Google (GOOG) now has some space to grow its new initiatives. One of the most noteworthy of the past year was picking up former U.S. State Department and ’21st Century Statecraft’ specialist Jared Cohen to start Google Ideas.

If you aren’t familiar with Cohen, he’s the State Department official that kept Twitter online during the Iranian student uprising.

Cohen officially came over to Google in September and his title is Director of Google Ideas.

Now it appears that Google is building out the Ideas initiative. Google posted two positions for its New York Office, one for a Principal and another for Associate in the Business Operations and Strategy division in Ideas.

Interesting job requirements include:

Language skills (Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Farsi, and/or Urdu are preferred)

Google also has officially defined Ideas for the first time as:

… a “think/do tank” focused on connecting across different sectors, disciplines and experiences to understand and act upon global challenges in new and innovative ways. The establishment of this team is based on the fact that there are many complex global challenges – social, economic, political, security – that remain unresolved despite lots of experts thinking about them and vast resources being allocated to them. The advent of connection technologies is helping to resolve some of these challenges, but these tools remain significantly under-utilized and are also increasing the complexity of challenges as hostile actors are leveraging their capabilities. Google Ideas is situated within the Business Operations & Strategy Group, a broader team that thinks strategically and globally about entire industries and helps Google define business and operational initiatives that contribute to the company’s growth.

Cohen may not be on hand for formal interviews, he’s currently..

Tweeting, but not checking email from the central west coast of Senegal, canoes through the mangroves & boabobs make for perfect setting.