GoogleGoogle's Creative Lab in London used to just be a one-man department. Steve Vranakis joined Google in 2011 after a 20-year career in the advertising industry. He was the founding partner of VC CP, a London-based agency that grew to hundreds of employees across five global offices and helped launch huge brands including Coke Zero, UK mobile carrier O2, and price comparison service Comparethemarket. But five years ago, Vranakis had rocked up at Google and he was on his own. The first project he was assigned was the small matter of creating a platform to allow children worldwide to send their science experiments to the International Space Station to have them performed by the astronauts. "I had to write it, shoot it, I had to photograph it; I had to do everything," Vranakis told Business Insider. Fortunately, he pulled it off.