17 Where Does Google Go Next?

Google gives its engineers one day a week to work on whatever project they want. A couple of colleagues did what many of the young geniuses do at Google: they came up with a cool idea. At Google, you often end up with a laissez-faire mess instead of resource allocation.

Source: Fortune, 26 May 2008 a Describe Google’s method of organising production with its software engineers.

b What are the potential gains and opportunity costs associated with this method?