Innovation – it’s the bread and butter of any tech-oriented company. If you’re not doing it, your products, services, and ultimately your company are regressing. Without innovation, you on the surest path there is to dinosaur state. I’ve read a lot of things about what large companies do to foster innovation. 3M, for example, allows employees to have every Friday to work on anything they want, regardless of whether it’s related to any current project. I recently came across another such innovation-fostering practice being employed by a large scale software vendor called Atlassian.
The idea is quite simple, but very powerful. Allow a select group of employees to participate in a competition for creating the most innovative feature. The catch? It must be fully shippable within 24 hours. Hence, the term FedEx Days. Very clever! And from the results they report at Atlassian, far more than just clever. They’ve been able to achieve some very sophisticated feature improvements based on this model. Apparently, the combined elements of competition and a fixed time constraint are key ingredients to achieving that innovation spark that’s often missing on extended projects.
So, if your team is stuck in a rut, consider giving this approach a try. You can offer real prizes (free beer, cash, trophies), benefits (additional vacation days, prime parking spot, name on the company newsletter), or just good old fashioned bragging rights. Lots of potential here, and it doesn’t have to be expensive.
PS: For a great demonstration as to why this works, check out this video!
