Jeffrey Dean, the celebrated Google engineer who oversees the Brain lab, is a short walk from Mr. Pichai. So are Ian Goodfellow, the researcher behind a new A.I. technique that generates lifelike images on its own, and Norm Jouppi, who explores ways of accelerating A.I. research through a new breed of computer chip.

“Any C.E.O. thinks a lot about where people are sitting — who they can walk around and have casual conversations with,” said Diane Greene, who oversees Google’s cloud computing team and sits on the board of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. “It is a very significant statement that he has moved that group right next him.”

Google is placing big bets on the A.I. being explored by researchers like Mr. Goodfellow. Many questions still hang over the progress of this research. But Mr. Pichai and the rest of the Google leadership hope it will accelerate the evolution of everything from smartphones and home appliances to internet services and robotics.

To Mr. Byrne, shaking up the seating chart at Overstock was a bit like a common management tactic in the military, when an officer will work closely with a small “command initiatives group” that is considerably more nimble than the rest of the organization.

“We were getting bureaucratic,” Mr. Byrne said. “And this was a way of creating added competition outside the bureaucracy.”

These big companies are trying to duplicate the vibe of a Silicon Valley start-up, where the boss is next to everyone. As start-ups grow, they often put key technology teams next to the chief executive. Ms. Greene, who was the chief executive of the software company VMware, said she had always made a point of sitting beside the top engineers because they saw the company’s future.