Managing Technology in Today's Workplace HELPING INNOVATION FLOURISH When employees are busy doing their regular job tasks, how can nnovation ever flourish? When job performance is evaluated by what you get done, how you get it done, and when you get it done, how can innovation ever happen? This has been a real challenge facing organizations wanting to be more innovative. One solu- tion has been to give employees mandated time to experiment with their own ideas on company-related projects.41 For instance, Google has its "20% Time" initiative, which encourages employees to spend 20 percent of their time at work on projects not related to their job descriptions. Other companies-Facebook, Apple, LinkedIn, 3M, Hewlett-Packard, among others-have similar initia- tives. Hmmm...so having essentially one day a week to work on company-related ideas you have almost seems too good to be true.. But, more importantly, does it really spark innovation? Well, it can. At Google, it led to the autocomplete system, Google News, Gmail, and Adsense. However, such "company" initiatives do face tre- mendous obstacles, despite how good they sound on paper. These challenges include: Strict employee monitoring in terms of time and resources lead- ing to a reluctance to use this time since most employees have enough to do just keeping up with their regular tasks. When bonuses/incentives are based on goals achieved, employ- ees soon figure out what to spend their time on. What happens to the ideas that employees do have? Unsupportive managers and coworkers who may view this as a "goof-around-for-free-day." Obstacles in the corporate bureaucracy. So, how can companies make it work? Suggestions Include: top managers need to support the initiatives/projects and make that support known; managers need to support employees who have that personal passion and drive, that creative spark-clear a path for them to pursue their ideas; perhaps allow employees more of an incentive to innovate (rights to design, etc.); and last, but not least, don't institutionalize it. Creativity and innovation, by their very na- ture, involve risk and reward. Give creative individuals the space to try and to fail and to try and to fail as needed. Discussion Questions: 3 What benefits do you see with such mandated experiment time for (a) organizations? (b) individuals? 4 What obstacles do these initiatives face and how can managers overcome those obstacles?