Self-Driven
Innovation Time
Provide space for free exploration and experimentation
Core Idea
Give members dedicated time to work on anything they believe adds value to the team or product. This time requires no approval, no progress reports — just share the results when it's over.
How to Implement
Scheduling
- Schedule fixed innovation time weekly or biweekly (e.g., Friday afternoon)
- Or allocate by percentage, such as 10-20% of work time
- Innovation time is official work time, not overtime
What You Can Do
- Research new technologies and tools
- Optimize existing system performance or user experience
- Fix technical debt you've always wanted to address but "never had time for"
- Build internal tools to improve team efficiency
- Prototype a side project
Sharing Results
- After innovation time ends, spend 5-10 minutes sharing what you did with the team
- Good ideas can be converted into formal projects or tasks
- Even if an experiment fails, share the failure experience
- Record all innovation experiment results as the team's exploration log
Tips
- Don't let innovation time become a buffer for catching up on deadlines
- Managers should lead by example and use innovation time for experiments themselves
- Don't set overly high expectations for innovation time output — the focus is on cultivating a habit of exploration