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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?"
And then when they see the results they usually are quite happy.
Of course, if they're starting their own business on company time with company equipment, even if the activity is nominally "independent," they'll soon find out that their new side business is actually their employer's new side business.
If you do this, you need to make it crystal clear ahead of time who will own the results of their time spent noodling. Ordinarily, what you do with company resources on company time while an employee belongs to the company. The situation of a company formally giving employees "permission" to do whatever they want might muddy the waters legally, but it certainly muddies them in people's minds. Put the policy in writing and make people sign off on it.
Likewise, you need guidelines for what kinds of projects they can spend that 20% on; i.e. obvious dead-ends with no value to the company?, surfing the web?, etc.
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Google has a bit of a specialized workforce--people who are creative and smart. I'm not sure how well it would work elsewhere, with people who are just punching the clock and holding no interest in work-related projects.