Are you giving employees time to play? Often, that’s when breakthrough ideas happen.
It’s something Jim Coudal has mentioned before — how he actually encourages employees to goof around. I asked him to expand on that and here’s what he wrote:
Most of the smart, creative, successful people I know spend a good deal of time looking for inspiration, tracking down ideas and doing research.
We do all those things too, we just don’t have a problem with calling it what it is, “goofing around.”
Play is essential, it’s through play that you find connections between things that might not be at all obvious through logic or practicality.
If you don’t have any accidents how are you ever going to have happy ones?
3M gives all employees 15-20 percent free time to work on their own projects. If it’s a success, the project can be spun off into a new business and the employee who originated it is given an equity share. Most of the inventions that 3M depends upon today came from this free time.
In 1968, 3M employee [Art] Fry was singing in the church choir and got annoyed that his bookmark kept falling out of his hymnal. “It was during the sermon,” Fry remembers, “that I first thought, What I really need is a little bookmark that will stick to the paper but will not tear the paper when I remove it.” Fry wondered whether it would be possible to create a repositionable bookmark that would stick only gently to a page. In the months after his church choir daydreaming, he spent his side-project time researching what would ultimately become the adhesive behind the hugely popular yellow Post-it Note. It was an unexpected, even random, invention that saw the light of day thanks to 3M’s flexible employee policy.
And you’ve probably heard about how Google offers engineers “20-percent time” so they’re free to work on things they’re passionate about. One interesting side effect of that is a more long-term view. People who are given free time often see further down the road since they’re not forced to focus on immediate problems.
IBM also gives lab researchers time to experiment and play. In fact, that’s how IBM invented the application of laser for eye surgery. A group of IBM scientists were experimenting with laser for improving IBM products. One scientist wanted to see what the effect of laser would be on a cut on his finger. Intrigued by the results, the scientists experimented on cows’ eyes and eventually human eyes. IBM eventually licensed out the technology, making millions in profit.
If you want breakthroughs, then give people some freedom.
joelarson
on 16 Jul 09The quote about the Post-It history isn’t quite right, and the truth is even more supportive of your thesis here. It was a engineer in the R&D department, Spencer Silver, who invented the adhesive, years before the church hymnal inspiration of Art Fry. When Silver invented the adhesive, nobody at 3M was interested, because the conventional wisdom was that the definition of a better adhesive was a stickier one, and Silver’s glue was not very sticky at all. He kept working with others in the company over the years trying to find a use. And he gave a talk on the low-stick adhesive which Art Fry attended, and it was only after that that the hymnal inspiration came to Fry.
In the quote, the idea for the use is presented as the first point of inspiration. But what the real story shows is that you don’t even need to know what you will use the product of your play for. Just having this stuff lying around and not totally throwing it out as useless, and it is possible a great use will be found for it..
spudart
on 16 Jul 09Great post, Joe. Even when work doesn’t officially condone playtime, it’s good when you have coworkers that instill this attitude. One of the things we do at work is every couple months we come up with new games for the super huge whiteboard in the hallway, then it becomes an ongoing interactive game or work of art.
spudart
on 16 Jul 09Oh oops. I mistook the “lastest by” as the author of the post. That’s the person who left the most recent comment.
Dave!
on 16 Jul 09And to expand on Joelarson’s additional info, the real story behind the post-it’s creation also highlights the importance of sharing and interaction among people. Imagine Silver had never given his talk, Fry’d never heard it… what opportunity may have been lost?
Nick Campbell
on 16 Jul 09Totally spot on. I find that the best ideas come during lunch. Usually it’s in the form of “Wouldn’t it be funny/cool if this happened?” After everyone pushes the joke or idea to it’s limits, the initial idea starts to become plausible. Tapered, clean knuckles, peanut butter jar? Why not? Push-up Pringles Can? Let’s make one.
Even answers to our most pressing projects seem to come from fun times rather than an official “brainstorming” session.
Daryn
on 16 Jul 09I thought Romy & Michelle invented the Post-it…
Christie: So, Mi-chelle! What are you up to? Michele: Oh, okay. Um, I invented Post-Its. Christie: No offense, Michele, but how in the world did you think of Post-Its? Michele: Uh… Michele: [turns to the A Group] Actually I invented a special kind of glue. Christie: Oh really? Well then I’m sure you wouldn’t mind giving us a detailed account of exactly how you concocted this miracle glue, would you? Michele: No. Um, well, ordinarily when you make glue first you need to thermoset your resin and then after it cools you have to mix in an epoxide, which is really just a fancy-schmancy name for any simple oxygenated adhesive, right? And then I thought maybe, just maybe, you could raise the viscosity by adding a complex glucose derivative during the emulsification process and it turns out I was right.
mknopf
on 16 Jul 09great article and SO TRUE. I spend quite a bit of time during the day just learning and reading things, it has made me a much more productive developer thats for sure
klaus
on 16 Jul 09Totally unrelated: I just wanted to let you know that the PDF version of your Getting Real book canot be viewed correctly in an e-reader :( You’ve embedded all the pages as images, and the text doesn’t carry over.
Hopes i could read it on my e-reader whilst flying, but alas.
cash for clunkers
on 16 Jul 09This is so very true. Creative types need play time to keep their crazy brains sparking.
J Wynia
on 16 Jul 09Just thought I’d point out that while 3M gives all of its scientists in the labs that freedom, it’s not all of its employees. I did software dev at 3M in the 2001-2003 era and I can assure you that no one on my team had that kind of freedom to explore.
Unless things have changed since 2003, its IT-related projects are pretty much standard big corp operations in cubicle farms: hardly the beacon of creative freedom that the often cited 20% for lab workers points to.
Dan Ryan
on 17 Jul 09I think this idea absolutely fantastic, but I can’t help but wonder what kind of nightmare it might become. What if nobody on your team wants to work on their own projects? What if everyone only uses their time to surf the Web or look at Facebook? Instead of great new products, or growing your employees, you’d have 20% higher labour costs than you would have, otherwise. I’d be interested in knowing how the companies that implement this kind of policy hold their employees accountable.
Ian Kershaw
on 17 Jul 09@Dan – How do you stop employees surfing the Web or looking at facebook when they are working on company projects? I would say that you trust them, but you may find some individuals who need supervision or “encouragement”.
I believe at Google, your 10-20% time projects form part of your performance review. The consequences of this may be that employees choose not to use this time, so I would say it has to be a balancing act.
MLDina
on 17 Jul 09This is true in my position in marketing, but can also be extremely helpful across the board. If you’re 100% focused on the immediate picture, you can lose sight of some great ideas that become the next ‘big thing’.
No matter what you call it- play time, free time, brainstorming, it’s great to have a break and stretch your brain just like you would your muscles after a long workout.
Lee
on 17 Jul 09The idea of creative types is bunk. Everyone can be creative.
Dima Malenko
on 18 Jul 09Nice post!
As [full] story with Post-It notes shows, not only should free time be devoted to exploration of new horizons, but there should be a practical need for the invention. All the three stories featured here have this moment of spark, when a new idea helped to remove pain for one single person and only after that was turned into highly successful product.
jon
on 20 Jul 09Google’s 20% time is not what it seems. It is additive, as in you can work 100% time on your project and 20% overtime on something you are interested in. Hardly any manager or product manager really budgets 80% of their teams time. The idea is good in theory though because it does encourage cross-pollination of ideas and helps people expand their professional networks.
winter
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Arun
on 22 Jul 09Nice post…
This discussion is closed.