What Would Google Do_ - Jeff Jarvis [58]
I’m not saying that every company is like Google and could or should implement its 20 percent rule. Even Google doesn’t extend the offer and expectation to all its employees (Iyer and Davenport say that’s a mistake). I understand how this policy could be impractical. Maybe you’ve already cut so close to the bone that you fear this reallocation of time and productivity could throw you over the edge. Maybe your employees aren’t built to invent—after all, not every company is populated with Ph.D.s in rocket science like Google is.
But anyone anywhere in a company could have a brilliant idea. How do you hear it? How do your employees propose new products, methods, or systems—through the dead-end suggestion box? How will they be rewarded for innovating? Who will try to stop them? Do you have a culture of innovation or is this just something you say at management meetings?
You need to encourage employees to suggest new ideas—even suggestions that will cannibalize, destroy, and rethink your business. It’s better for you to disrupt and cannibalize yourself than for a competitor to do it to you. Just as Dell, Starbucks, and Salesforce.com maintain versions of their ideas platforms for employees and as Best Buy has BlueShirt Nation, its online community where employees solve problems, so does Google maintain a place for ideas. “It’s like a voting pool where you can say how good or bad you think an idea is,” Mayer told Fast Company. “Those comments lead to new ideas.” Add the lessons of openness and transparency to the need for innovation and you will end up building spaces where employees can share ideas and improve them. Procter & Gamble’s A.G. Lafley said in Strategy + Business that “a practice of open innovation” (his emphasis) with “a broad network of social interactions” is critical. “The idea for a new product may spring from the mind of an individual, but only a collective effort can carry that idea through prototyping and launch.”
There are different schools of thought about ownership of ideas. Lafley emphasized collective effort. Mayer said that in Google’s “incredibly open culture” the company tries to avoid territoriality and to “give ideas credit, not credit for ideas.” Nike understands the need to own and protect an idea. In 2008, I attended a brainstorming session at Nike aimed at finding better systems to encourage employees to contribute to their communities. We heard from four employees who were already doing this on their own. One of them, footwear designer D’Wayne Edwards, created a contest for young and aspiring designers. Edwards had many agendas: He wanted the company to nurture designers like him. He had grown up dreaming of creating sports footwear. Mentors gave him guidance and breaks, which led to his dream job at Nike. He wanted to give back. He also believed that Nike owed a debt to the urban young people who had elevated the company’s brands and made them hot. And he believed his contest would help the company find and develop talent with new ideas. Edwards said the contest’s winners, though just teenagers, had enough talent and innovative spirit to start working at Nike the next day.
The group discussed Edwards’ process in hopes of replicating—or at least not ruining