For those of you not familiar with the Google enterprise structure, they have established a ‘golden rule’ for managing innovation. No, it’s not the 80/20 rule; it’s the 70/20/10 rule. 70 percent of your time on the core business, 20 percent on related projects, and 10 percent on unrelated new businesses. Let’s say for someone working 50 hours a week, 5 hours would be focused on new projects. This is how Google has established itself as an innovator, a leader in the search engine world, and more recently a leader in new technical areas. Google Earth(which is very cool), Local Google, and Google News are just some of the end products of this 10 percent allocation.

To me it would almost seem obvious that other companies would want to copy this rule, as it fosters innovation, which leads to more revenue and possible new business endeavors. You don’t limit yourself for new products or process enhancements coming from your R&D department. It levels the playing field within the company, and anyone who has produced something valuable for the company can bring it to management.

If I was running a company today I would introduce this ‘rule’. Think about it. Maybe those 4-5 hours a week your employee would be spent surfing the web, or chatting away, could be spent working on something they truly enjoyed. Maybe these projects would bring your company savings in cost, new revenue streams, or new business. It would shake things up within; maybe someone producing quality projects with his 10 percent time would be more productive and useful in a new position or department.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, spoke of about innovation years ago:

“I was recently asked to speak at a conference about the role of innovation in enduring great companies. My first impulse was to decline, for a simple reason: great companies do not necessarily have innovation as a central part of their vision or strategy. They are just as likely to be followers as they are to be leaders with pioneering products and leading-edge services.”
-Inc. Magazine ‘97

This mentality doesn’t survive in the new economy. Companies that stay on top of innovating, whether it be in processes, products, or marketing are going to succeed greatness in today’s economy. Just read The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman to understand. You can count that Google isn’t going to lose its position anytime soon!