Independent Developer Projects in the Workplace?

An anonymous reader asks: "My company wants to increase creativity and innovation, we our thinking of implementing a Google like policy of 20% of your time for independent projects but I can't find any details on how Google actually implements this. I am curious how they divvy up their time (1 day a week or 1 week a month)? How do you keep your real project from impacting it? At what point are the projects reviewed? Has anybody experienced other successful ways to stimulate creativity at their workplace?"

Comments

20% Time at Google.

[chrisd]

20% time works pretty simply, you identify a project you want to work on, write up a design doc and have that be your 20% time. You can also put your work into an existing project at Google. You can also bunch up 20% time and take it all at once or in larger chunks than 1 day a week or whatever. Of course, Google engineers are expected to make sure that thier 80% projects are in a good place, but we trust each other to make those kinds of decisions. The trust is what makes 20% time work for everyone.

There are some caveats, but that's the broad strokes. News.google.com, Orkut and a bunch of stuff on labs came from 20% time.

Chris