Would Google-style 20% innovation time-off for personal projects work at your company?
Members of engineering development teams at Google are actively encouraged to allocate and spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them - a practice sometimes referred to as "Innovation Time Off". Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors - see http://labs.google.com/ for other examples. See http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=about.html&about=eng for a sample of the engineering culture. Also, there was a Stanford University Entrepreneurial Thought Leader seminar presented by Marissa Mayer of Google concerning the Google approach - see the podcast at http://edcorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1554.
So my main question to the LinkedIn community is: "Would the Google 20% innovation time-off practice work for engineering teams at your company?"
Supplementary questions.
1) Is this an industry-specific best practice for web software companies or could it work for other high tech industry segments? Does it work better in large or small companies?
2) How would you manage this in your corporate culture? i.e. How do you ensure that work on personal projects doesn't detract employee energy or focus from the other 80% of company-directed priorities?
3) Would personal project research plans require managerial approval? Would your firm advise or help on identifying potential areas needing innovation or do you give free reign?
Good Answers (5)
Tim S.
Quality Engineering Manager at Northrop Grumman Mission Systems
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It is the wise company that allows its employees to use 20% of their time in the development of personal projects. I have worked for companies that allow employees to pursue personal projects and I have been one of the employees that followed my project into production. In most cases the employee ends up far exceeding the 40 hour work week and as a result the 20% is really captured development that does not carry a man loading cost. In essence the hours are free at least when it comes to exempt employees. In my case one of my projects lead to over a billion dollars in sales. So the risk for the company was almost nonexistent compares to the net return. The employee the works on a personal project is more likely to complete it on time and be successful because that have a passion about what they see as the end product.
This process is not limited to software as it has been practiced by many companies making commercial and military companies (Lockheed Skunk Works). The success of programs like this are based on the management within a company and how much they trust the employees. Managers that are micro-managers will cause programs like personal project development to die a quick death and they will drive the highly creative employees to leave the company. The manage effect is most dramatic in small companies where the pay off can be the biggest. This process of developing products will work with any size company.
These types of projects are best managed on a personal basis and by a person who is non-judgmental on how a problem is solved. There are many ways to solve a problem and you only need one to get you there. Too much management and criticism will cause the employee to drop interest in the project or worse follow the direction of an inept manager. The key is to remember is to reward the employee well for their efforts. There is nothing like financial reward and personal satisfaction to make other employees want to emulate successful peers. After a while all a company will need to do is provide the pronblem to be solved and let the employees run with it. Don’t get caught up in allowing only star employees to work on projects. The key to a good manager is for them to find what makes an employee enthused about their job, and then take the road blocks out of their way so they can be sucessful.
Clarification added May 25, 2008:
Below is a response I sent to the following follow up questions.
For skunk works projects, even if an employee comes up with a project idea, does senior management need veto power or to provide tacit approval to ensure that the project is congruent with corporate objectives? Or can a middle manager run a program without any senior management interferences or road blocks whatsoever?
For Skunk work projects to be successful there needs to be visibility at a high level within a company. The key to convincing management to back a project will rely on the project team keeping 3 things in focus at all times.
1. There must be a financial benefit for the company.
2. The team must be solving some fundamental problem that the company needs to keep it competitive.
3. The team must believe they have a solution to the problem that will keep the company competitive.
2 and 3 may seem the same but actually they are different. One perspective is from the managements end and the other is from the employees. If one of these 3 is missing the project will not be successful. The high level management overview is not to design the product for the project team, rather they are there to encourage it or refocus to team to meet a corporate object. I have worked on projects that had direct benefit for the local division and ones that had corporate benefit. The ones with local or sector benefit had over sight at the sector VP level once per month. Projects that benefited corporate had direct oversight by the CEO once per month. The oversight was to determine status and if they could be of help to the team to remove road blocks.
The personal projects I worked on started with my doing enough upfront work to convince my management who in turn set up meeting further up the chain. I would do the presentations as I had the passion to see the potential for the project. If it were left to my management or another person the passion to convince the company would not be the same and the project would likely die. Likewise, if I was approaches by one of my employees I always had them do the presenting for the same reasons. Keep the project local until you are ready to share you findings and make sure you have done you homework (i.e.: what problem is being solved, why does the market or customer need the teams solution, intellectual property filings, preliminary infringement studies, manufacturing cost, competitive analysis of the market, schedule for development to production, pros and cons, development and capital cost, and expected benefit).
Andrew C.
Entrepreneur - Technology Advocate - Lean Champion
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Gordon,
3M has been doing this for many years, with high levels of innovation and motivated employees. This is a great idea that can be replicated by many companies - implementation may have to be a bit creative, since in roles such as operations, business continues every day.
Best regards,
Andrew Cahoon
Perhaps your question is intentionally ambiguous.
Would it work for engineering teams at the company I work for? In what respect? Would it allow that company to retain more of it's top talent? Probably. From a management perspective, would allowing the staff spend 20% of their time on topics that could not be directly correlated to the bottom line be allowed? Probably not.
The manufacturing industry, particularly in the States, is not going to allow this. Margins are too tight. My perception is that they would move resources overseas rather than allow software engineers to engage their creative side without clear results.
We tried it once for a few months. We set a time, (it was Wednesday afternoons I think, after lunch) were we would only work on our pet projects. This was a mini program that my manager started and was not company wide. That was the ultimate downfall of the program unfortunately. We would work on our pet projects, but other departments would want us in meetings or would come to us during our pet project time. Eventually it became to difficult to just focus on our pet projects and the program fizzled out.
It is a good idea but in order for it to work, there has to be company wide acceptance and respect for this time. I think that it almost has to be scheduled at the same time. If you have people working on their pet projects / innovations all at different times, you might run into schedule conflicts. The one day a week or an afternoon where everyone is doing it, is a good way to go.
I would love for this type of program to start again. I have a few ideas sitting on the back burner now because I don't have the time to jump fully into them because of my normal day to day work.
Gary A L.
Business Development
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More than likely you will find that older traditional companies will find it more difficult to introduce this concept. They have created a work culture that forces tight margins and as a result, anything additional would cause it to break the bank (or bottom line).
However, younger companies, or companies willing to take a risk would also have to have the plan in place prior to hiring people. There is a small percentage of the population that are innovative but if your company is already staffed, then you may not have a sufficient population that is innovative enough to capture value as a whole for the company. Most companies say the "hire only top talent", but the reality is that a lot of companies hire the top talent within their budgets or predefined salary criteria (ie 1-3yrs = xxx, 4-6 yrs = xxx, 7-12 yrs = xxx, etc) that thought process will stifle creativity within the working place and cause things like the Google 20% to fail.
Companies will need to pay a little more to capture the real top 10%, then give them freedom to pursue ideas. Just like several have mentioned, you will find that those people will far exceed the 40hrs per week due to passion.
