Mashups were all the rage but a few years ago! Fast forward a few years, and the world mashup is hardly ever uttered - or at least, very seldom without a hint of sarcasm. What happened?
Three Innovation Models
March 22, 2010
Une version française de cet article, intitulée Trois modèles d’innovation, est disponible sur le Pheromone Lab. A current poster child of innovation management, Google has been following the McKnight and 3M doctrine: every employee is entitled to dedicate 20% of their time to experiment on projects of their liking. The most promising projects started by googlers may have a chance of becoming Google products, while the rest is still a good source of training. Also interesting is the pollination and competition factors: because employees need to “sell” their work to their colleagues through a peer-review system directly inspired from academia, a sane (?) competition atmosphere keeps everyone working their best. I do not know, however, if Google employees are forced to deliver 5 days’ worth of work in 4 days, whether this 20% is done as overtime, or whether the sanctuary of “free time” is actually respected. Notable designer Sagmeister once decided that a way to keep his design team creative was to take a sabbatical year off every 7 years. During his year off, he usually travels, toys with ideas and prototypes, builds fun projects – all without the usual pressure of having to deliver. I ignore, however, if Sagmeister pays his staff during that sabbatical, or if they all go and work elsewhere for a year and get hired back when he comes home… In terms of culinary hype, few restaurants match Barcelona’s “El Bulli”, a restaurant that opens only 6 months a year. Adria and his team spend the other 6 months experimenting in their lab, slowly and carefully designing the next season’s menu. And when they get back, all reservations for the year are usually filled within the span of a day. Alas, it seems the Michelin 3-stars restaurant will be closing soon… by lack of profits? Or to try and reinvent itself? What do these three organizations have in common? They all invest time – giving their employees a chance to escape the daily grind of production and experiment. The main difference is how long, and how frequent, is that “free time”: 1 year every 7 years, 6 months a year… or 1 day a week? 2010-03-07 2010-03-25Google
Stefan Sagmeister
Ferran Adria and El Bulli
Investing in time
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What happened to mashups?
#ald10: looking for female role models