Cut Innovation Some Slack

Without slack built into the organization, efforts to innovate may fail simply
because there is no spare time for thinking or resources for experimenting.
Many of the world’s greatest ideas arrived in spare moments, unplanned, and
unscheduled. People use slack to provide the chaos needed for creation.

A large company is large because it successfully innovated at some point in its

history. It survives past that point for one of two reasons: Either it has not yet
used up the resources acquired through innovation. Or they are still using their
slack resources to provide the raw materials for experimentation and innovation.

A small company is small because it has not yet found and exploited a mass-
market innovation. Its challenge is to use its limited resources to find the
innovation needle in a haystack and stay in business while it looks. The business
must choose how to use available slack. Should you bet on innovation? Should
you use it in operations? Should you return it to shareholders?

Google uses slack by dividing every employee’s time into 70% core tasks, 20%
related to core pursuits but determined by the individual, and 10% on far-out
ideas. The San Francisco initiative for city-wide free WIFI came from far-out time,
as did Google Talk, a free system for instant and voice messaging, the sponsorship
of the X-Prize for the first private lunar landing, or any number of Google ideas to
be found on their Google labs page.

Genentech also provide their people with 20% slack innovation time. Friday nights
are for company beer drinking. People celebrate achievements with parties,
commemorative t-shirts, and celebrity bands. It invests half of all revenue back
into research. All of this is slack. Slack provides the raw material for collaborative
breakthroughs. People have time to think. They have time to solve problems with
colleagues. That’s why the company has successfully launched four of their
thirteen drugs in less than three years, and has thirty more in the pipeline that
have all succeeded in their clinical trials. People have space to consider
alternatives and do science right.

Slack is also about trusting smart people. The world is too complex to control, so
the only result of attempting control is to slow down innovation. You’ll just get in
the way of people’s attempts to improve. Providing unscheduled time around
formal responsibilities is the best way to show you trust people to contribute. It’s
a lot more powerful than simply complaining about a lack of initiative.

You need to leave space in the product plan and the roadmap for stuff that no
one thought of when you wrote them. Over-scheduling squeezes out spontaneity.
It stops people reacting creatively to situations, problems, or customers. When
opportunities or possibilities come along, people are just too busy to investigate.
Evidence shows that this kind of breakthrough creativity does not increase when
starved of time. Moments of reflection help. Yet most people do not have the
time to reflect on what they have done and how they can improve.

A software consultant at the CERN institute in Switzerland used slack time and
computing resources to invent the World Wide Web. An engineer at Texas
Instruments used slack time and laboratory space to invent the integrated circuit
that led directly to the computing revolution. An accountant working for the Fleer
Chewing Gum Company in Philadelphia used slack time and raw materials to
invent Bubble Gum. Not one of these inventions came from scheduled time.

Just having slack resources is not enough. If people are sitting around bored, they
are less likely to innovate. If slack allows people to avoid tough decisions then it
will only lead to complacency. Slack is not there to provide a barrier between the
company and reality. It’s there to allow experimentation. To encourage thinking
that creates new products, solutions, and industries.

Google time gives people 14 days a month on core tasks, 4 days on core pursuits
with tasks determined by the individual, and 2 days a month on far-out ideas.
How many days a month do you think far-out ideas deserve? How many days a
month could you give your people? How many hours is innovation worth?
References

Amabile, Teresa, Constance N. Hadley, and Steven J. Kramer. "Creativity Under

the Gun." Special Issue on The Innovative Enterprise: Turning Ideas into Profits.
Harvard Business Review 80, no. 8 (August 2002): 52-61.

Bourgeois, L. J, III, 1981, “On the Measurement of Organizational Slack”, The

Academy of Management Review, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Jan, 1981), pp. 29-39

DeMarco, T, 2002, “Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total
Efficiency”, Broadway Books

Morris, B, 2006, “Genentech: Brainiacs with passion for science and contempt for
business-speak”, Fortune Magazine, January 20, 2006

Nohria, N, & Gulati, R, 1996, “Is Slack Good or Bad for Innovation?”The Academy
of Management Journal, Vol. 39, No. 5. (Oct., 1996), pp. 1245-1264

Quinn, JB, 1985, Managing innovation: controlled chaos. By: Quinn, James Brian.
Harvard Business Review, May/Jun85, Vol. 63 Issue 3, p73-84