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  • March 12th, 2008
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Thoughts on Google’s 20% time

Everybody loves to think one little trick can make their organization transform into a super creative powerhouse. With the rise of Google, no single tactic comes up more in innovation circles than their concept of 20% time. Simply put, employees get 1/5th of their time to work on projects of their own choosing.

For the myths of innovation book i spent time studying lots of concepts, models and approaches similar to 20% time, and even talked to a few Google employees about how they see the idea. What follows below hits on most of the erroneous assumptions I’ve heard people make about the concept.

Here’s a short report:

  • Google’s 20% time is more of an attitude and culture than a rule. First, hourly time isn’t tracked there, so there’s no way to enforce or even know what percentage of time people are spending on side projects. But more importantly, the entire idea seems to function more as an attitude – that new projects should be spawned by whoever has the best ideas, not who is in what place in the hierarchy, and the culture is based on this fundamental belief. There seems to be way more support for the pursuit of ideas generally than in most cultures, and simply creating a 20% rule doesn’t give you that culture. G-mail, Adsense & Google News are three examples of major offerings initiated by a self-motivated engineer. See Google employee Joe Beda’s blog post for one of better first persons accounts you’ll find online.
  • It’s worth noting that people at Google work very hard on their 80% time. It’s not as if every Friday is 20% day and work shuts down on all existing projects so people can do their 20% things. Google culture, much like Microsoft in the early 90s, has a very strong, competitive work ethic, and peer pressure and pride drive many people to work hard. Like many tech companies, the vibe is that, yes, if you have an idea you should follow it, but not to the determent of other responsibilities. Time for 20% projects is protected, but more by individuals than by managers. Managers spend little time tracking engineers (span of control is wide, with managers typically having 10 or more reports, influencing people and code more than “managing their direct reports”). I’ve heard different things from employees in different groups at Google about how this has changed as the company has grown (10k employees and counting) and perhaps the variances in their culture will continue to grow. (Read Steve Yegge’s excellent post on software development process at Google).
  • The 20% time concept isn’t new. 3M developed a 15% time rule in the 1950s with the same exact intentions and basic philosophy. Masking tape and Post-it notes are two notable products that were concieved and developed by individual engineers working without formal budgets, plans or management support. I’m sure other companies and organizations in the past have had similiar attitudes about creativity (Edison’s Menlo park lab likely qualifies). For more on 3m’s approach read this short Wired article. Also, the Google founders mention at their talk at TED that Montessori school philosophy influenced their ideas on 20% time (Jump to 8:50).
  • Google’s culture has a resistance, or even distrust, of hierarchy – they often use voting, peer review, and debate to make decisions or decide which new projects and features to add. With that structure the 20% time idea makes sense as they want self-motivated creatives putting ideas in the hoper for others to review, evaluate, or contribute to, rather than waiting for executives to spend weeks making big vision documents and marketing plans, dividing things up into smaller and smaller pieces, before allowing creatives to make (creatively constrained) contributions. 20% time complements, or perhaps even depends on, what is a unique culture for a large, 10,000 person company. It’s the lack of dependence on hierarchy that empowers individuals, and this is the thing people at more conventional companies have the hardest time comprehending. 3M also had a strong maverick, anti-structure vibe that made their 15% successful. Giving people time is one thing, but it’s the culture of the org they get that time inside that determines how useful that time will be to the company.

20% time experiment: Atlassian, a software development shop, just announced a serious 20% time experiment, adopting the idea in their culture and blogging about it as they go.

Disclosure: Don’t take my word for it alone – While this is based on some research, and although I have visited Google several times, I have never been a Google employee and if you start with the links above you’ll hear from more authoritative sources on Google management and culture than myself. If you know of others I should read, please leave ‘em in the comments.

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33 Responses

  • Joserra - March 12, 2008 at 3:19 pm #

  • I was wondering in my blog (sorry, in spanish) how to move that 20% Atlassian experiment to another kind of software enterprise: To a service oriented enterprise, where you work for projects, not for products.
    I suppose the idea is to leave employees decide how to perform better, for example, but I think this is a different one and not so interesting for most developers.


  • olie - March 16, 2008 at 9:26 pm #

  • Joserra, To apply the time in an environment that doesn’t have projects, the developers work on what needs to be done. This might be tools to make their own jobs easier, automated test tools, tracking tools, automating your own business, etc. Basically, anything that YOU can use, becomes your “product”, even though you might not sell it to customers.


  • Ben - May 21, 2008 at 12:08 pm #

  • Thanks for the comments on having to create a creative culture and not just give employees some dedicated time! I even wrote about it in my own blog!


Links to this article

  • Del.icio.us.ness for March 12th - March 12, 2008 at 5:32 pm

  • [...] Thoughts on Google’s 20% time – great article from Scott Berkun on Google’s famous 20% time. Note: Google do not have timesheets! The 20% is not actually recorded – but still seems to work Bookmark It Hide Sites News [...]


  • 20% Time: The Blog « Pat’s Daily Grind - March 13, 2008 at 12:48 pm

  • [...] work”, and 20% of their time working on “pet projects”.  In practice, there’s a lot more to it than that one sentence (and it’s not new, 3M did this before [...]


  • Creative time « Fluent Simplicity - March 14, 2008 at 7:52 am

  • [...] approach. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the details, I would suggest reading Scott’s post for background. I, for one, wasn’t aware that other companies have established creative time, [...]


  • scottberkun.com » How Apple got everything right - March 20, 2008 at 10:49 am

  • [...] and other meetings at Apple that are similar in purpose to what goes on at Microsoft or Dell. Like Google’s 20% time, culture is the overlooked factor in why outcomes are what they are. The same process can arrive at [...]


  • links for 2008-04-29 (Leapfroglog) - April 28, 2008 at 11:32 pm

  • [...] scottberkun.com » Thoughts on Google’s 20% time “[…] the entire idea seems to function more as an attitude – that new projects should be spawned by whoever has the best ideas, not who is in what place in the hierarchy, and [Google's] culture is based on this fundamental belief […]“ (tags: Google innovation creativity culture) [...]


  • Make few assumptions; many validations. - May 21, 2008 at 10:15 am

  • [...] employees are given 20% of their work day to innovate and be creative on individual projects.  Scott Berkun does a great job of explaining that it is not the actual Google rule behind this idea that has [...]


  • Make few assumptions; many validations. - May 22, 2008 at 1:07 pm

  • [...] where employees are given 20% of their work day to innovate and be creative on individual projects. Scott Berkun does a great job of explaining that it is not the actual Google rule behind this idea that has [...]


  • The New Batman | Leveraging Ideas - September 28, 2009 at 3:05 pm

  • [...] this is the wrong approach. Developers, designers and the rest of us need our own version of Googles 20% time. Side projects keep talented folks sharp, motivated and happy. I think this new era of Batmen is [...]


  • Eleven Years of Google: A Look Back « missybonline - October 2, 2009 at 8:45 pm

  • [...] Google Labs, and the popular Google News service, a product of the company’s so-called “twenty percent time“. Geeky Google also decided to offer a Klingon translation of the site for all those Star [...]


  • Eleven Years of Google: A Look Back » Blog - October 4, 2009 at 8:45 pm

  • [...] Google Labs, and the popular Google News service, a product of the company’s so-called “twenty percent time“. Geeky Google also decided to offer a Klingon translation of the site for all those Star [...]


  • Thejesh GN » Seven Years in IT and Seven things I learnt - October 13, 2009 at 7:47 am

  • [...] Have personal projects Many would have written about it. If your employer supports your personal project then nothing like it. If not make sure to have some personal project. You can start from writing simple tools/scripting. Once you feel better try to contribute to a open source project. Later you can have your own big project. There is nothing like self learning, your personal projects will give you a chance to learn what you want. It also gives a chance to escape from **ordinary regular work**. Updated: You should read Scott Berkun’s post on 20% time. [...]


  • Heres to the Passionate Creatives | CloudAve - October 13, 2009 at 8:43 am

  • [...] on the left is closer to what well see. Enlightened companies will follow the examples set by Google and 3M, encouraging employees to pursue initiatives outside their regular routines. This does a couple [...]


  • Duel Boot » Google is so great they’re not - October 13, 2009 at 6:41 pm

  • [...] making them a ton of money, analytics is fantastic, etc. And if you’ve never heard of their 20 percent time rule you should, it’ll probably make you want to work for [...]


  • 3M, and Google, and Unity! Oh my! | themadpeacock - December 9, 2009 at 10:20 am

  • [...] and Google, and Unity! Oh my! 3M call it the 15 percent rule, Google call it 20% time and now Unity has adopted what they call FAFF (Fridays Are For Fun). “I think there are a lot [...]


  • Innovation by acquisition - March 10, 2010 at 11:26 am

  • [...] of their products come out of projects started this way. (For an interesting perspective, check out this article by Scott Berkun about Google’s 20% [...]


  • The Wisdom Manifesto « Crystal Key Ministries - March 12, 2010 at 2:41 pm

  • [...] for experimentation and play — for people to find new ways to change the world. Google’s 20% time is going the way of dinosaur — and so, unfortunately, is its wisdom. If you don’t get time [...]


  • Innovation by acquisition | News, Music for all - March 17, 2010 at 9:04 am

  • [...] of their products come out of projects started this way. (For an interesting perspective, check out this article by Scott Berkun about Google’s 20% [...]


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