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Thoughts on Google’s 20% time

Scott Berkun reports on Google's 20% time, as a way of driving innovation. To quote:

Google’s 20% time is more of an attitude and culture than a rule. First, hourly time isn’t tracked there, so there’s no way to enforce or even know what percentage of time people are spending on side projects. But more importantly, the entire idea seems to function more as an attitude - that new projects should be spawned by whoever has the best ideas, not who is in what place in the hierarchy, and the culture is based on this fundamental belief. There seems to be way more support for the pursuit of ideas generally than in most cultures, and simply creating a 20% rule doesn’t give you that culture.

Posted by jamesr on March 14, 2008 08:11 PM
Categories: Knowledge management