If we made a ranking of top corporate buzzwords of the past two decades, “innovation” would likely take the podium; Chief Innovation Officer seats were added to many executive board rooms across the globe, R&D divisions have been “recoolified”. If innovating has become a sector-agnostic must for any business claiming to matter - what did it mean for companies that offer innovative technology solutions as the core of their service?

How did we get this idea?

“Point.1” was introduced to the group of PM’s at a meeting called by our CTO: “10% - that’s how much time we’ll give our employees to dedicate to their passion project / learning / self-improvement. 10%, or 0-Point-1 if you will”.

The idea was fairly familiar to us, as we already had an R&D program in place; with a budget of 8h a month per person, it was a good sidekick for when our job required us to move outside of our comfort zone a bit quicker than the project could tolerate. Point.1 came with considerable improvements and ambition to provide a more global and meaningful platform for growing the company’s skill portfolio both vertically and horizontally. The main improvement to the R&D program was that the option to do Point.1 activities was available within working hours (previously only an after-hours option), a doubled hourly budget per person to be utilized per quarter rather than per month and periodical company-wide meetings for beneficiaries to present their progress.

I guess this concept and its pros do not require a deeper introduction, especially in such an innovation and employee-driven market as IT; I believe most companies with aspirations to acquire and retain talent are bound to have that board meeting, with one presentation slide dedicated to a Gmail case study and the potential that lies in empowering employees to follow their passion.

#agile #culture