Creative Reaction

Why, it was just a few days ago when I mentioned a company which had adopted a four-day workweek, and today I read in eWeek (print) magazine about Google’s version of this.

(Interestingly, eWeek’s own  - always frustrating  - search engine could not find the online version of the article, even though I typed three very specific phrase in quotes; It was the top result using Google. I always feel lucky.)

Google’s version, as you may already know, is “20 per cent time” - Google’s technical employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their time on projects that interest them. (Yes, they measure it. Google measures everything.)

What I did not know was that cash prizes can be involved. Now some of us might be able to imagine a $10,000 bonus for making some sort of amazing increase to a company’s bottom line. Well how about a $350,000 bonus?! For someone low on the totem pole! As Keanu Reeves is fond of saying, “WHOA!”

Of course, Google has a bigger bottom line; everything is proportional. And, as I’ve mentioned before, Google’s “crazy ideas” make good business sense. This is how they came up with Google News, Gmail, and Adsense.

On our scale, at our companies, what are we doing to encourage BIG thinking? Cash prizes as a tool for creativity? Why not? It’s actually not so crazy.