Innovation – focus or freedom?

Is there a right way to do innovation?
 

3M launched its now famous 15 percent program in 1948 and it is still running today.
 

Once a year, about 200 employees from dozens of divisions make posters describing their 15 percent project, almost as if presenting at a high school science fair. Standing next to it, they eagerly await feedback, suggestions, and potential co-collaborators. Wayne Maurer is an R&D manager in 3M's abrasives division and calls it a chance for people to unhinge their "inner geek." He elaborates: "For technical people, it's the most passionate and engaged event we have at 3M."
 

Past projects have included making clear bandages, optical films that reflect light and designing a way to make painter's tape stick to wall edges (to protect against paint bleed). All these products are on the market now.
 

"It's one of the things that sets 3M apart as an innovative company, by sticking to that culture of giving every one of our employees the ability to follow their instincts to take advantage of opportunities for the company," says Kurt Beinlich, a technical director for 3MBeinlich.
 

It inspired Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin who in their 2004 IPO letter said, "We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner."  
 

20% products have included Google News, Gmail, and even AdSense.
 

By contrast, Apple’s innovation culture has been more top-down alignment of talent than facilitation of bottom-up empowerment.
 

On his return to Apple Jobs famously slashed the number of innovation projects and told the teams to focus on just five.
 

Steve Jobs passed on his views to Larry Page “The main thing I stressed was focus,” Jobs said. “Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up. It’s now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.”
 

Interestingly there is now debate as to whether or not employees still get that freedom nowadays, with a number of ex-Google insiders saying that freedom has been severely curtailed.
 

In recent years, many other companies have adopted a version of Jobs’ advice as their new innovation mantra, “Fewer, bigger, better”.
 

So have 3M got it right or has Apple? Maybe - just maybe - there isn’t one right answer…

---

Read more from Giles Lury in our Clubhouse.