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A fascinating article on the Computerworld website takes a closer look at Google's often admired but seldom imitated "20 percent rule," which allows engineers to spend one-fifth of their time on corporate projects of their choosing, even if the project isn't part of their job descriptions. What caught my eye about this article is this keen assessment of the real value that this exceptional practice brings to Google:
"What the 20 percent rule has done at Google is turn a significant chunk of the company into something akin to a venture-capital innovation laboratory, but without outside funding to seed the work."
Recent writings from several authors on innovation suggest that the venture capital model is perhaps the most logical one for business leaders to follow, because it places small bets on a large number of ideas, and then provides additional rounds of funding to those ideas that show promise and pass certain milestones. The rest are dumped while investments in them are still small.
Venture capitalists don't know at the front end of the process which of their bets will eventually pay off, but they know that a certain percentage WILL do so. And they have a process to identify and nurture the most promising concepts, while quickly cutting their losses on those that no longer meet their criteria for growth and development.
The other aspect of this quote that got my attention is the idea of all of this experimentation going on at Google "without outside funding to seed the work." Isn't that the situation most of us are facing in these recessionary times today? We're being asked to drive innovation in our organizations, with budgets slashed to the bone. The article points out that giving product development people a certain percentage of time to pursue the ideas they feel passionately about may be a promising recessionary strategy. |
