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The 20% Doctrine

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The 20% Doctrine

How Tinkering, Goofing Off, and Breaking the Rules at Work Drive Success in Business

HarperBusiness,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Rekindle your company’s potential by letting your employees run wild.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Veteran business journalist Ryan Tate explores how firms generate innovation based on Google’s approach, which allows employees to spend 20% of their paid time on personal projects. Google’s idea migrated to Flickr, Yahoo, and nontechnological environments such as journalism, education and food service. Although this model is not viable for every business, Tate demonstrates its applicability across a variety of industries. He explains how to turbocharge your workers’ creativity with unbridled camaraderie, “kamikaze deadlines” and possibly absurd expectations. getAbstract recommends Tate’s primer to managers who want to inspire their workers and to workers who are already inspired and just need a little time.

Summary

The “20% Doctrine”

You can create environments that impel innovation. Some of the most innovative companies, such as Google, allow their workers to use 20% of their paid work time – that’s one day a week, four days a month, or two and a half months a year – to explore projects that challenge and inspire them. A 20% work setting will:

  • “Provide creative freedom” – Developing side projects liberates workers from rules and bureaucracies that can hamper innovation.
  • “Connect with people’s passions” – Letting people work on something personal nurtures infectious enthusiasm that benefits morale and the product.
  • “Embrace reuse” – Hack an existing product, service or technology in a “clever new way” to gain critical momentum and advantages.
  • Recognize that “worse is better” – A 20% project never gets enough money or time. Create a crude, primitive version as soon as possible; refine it later.
  • “Iterate quickly” – Release improvements in rapid succession to draw attention to your project, create buzz and feedback, and encourage others to support your ideas.
  • “Communicate lessons as you learn them...

About the Author

Ryan Tate is the technology gossip blogger for Gawker’s website and a veteran business journalist. Approximately 700,000 people read his posts each month.

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