The Next Next Common Sense
Global conglomerate 3M encourages not only its researchers but also its managers to take 15 percent of their time to “explore.” The company recognizes that scientists are at their most creative when working on proj- ects of their own choosing. The creativity unleashed carries over into their assigned tasks as well. This approach has been expanded by companies like Google (with its famous “20% time”) and Atlassian (with its quarterly “ShipIt Days”), which institutionalize time for employees to step out of their primary roles and into experimental ones. These practices recognize that innovation often emerges when people are allowed to inhabit multiple professional identities within the same organization. Perhaps the best example of multiplicity is Thermo Electron, a com- pany founded in 1956 by Dr. George Hatsopoulos, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher and professor of mechanical engineer- ing. His original plan for Thermo Electron was to develop commercial applications for thermodynamics - the study of converting heat directly into electricity - an application still unrealized by the company. By the early 1980s, Dr. Hatsopoulos was looking for a way to continually renew the energy of the business, and the company needed funding to further development of its heart-assist technology. The solution was to “spin out” Thermedics, one of the core businesses. Spin-out, as Hatsopoulos conceived it, is the opposite of spin-off. With spin-off a peripheral business is cast aside; with spin-out a core business is given access to the public capital markets while retaining a strong affilia- tion with (and long-term part-ownership by) the parent. Thermo Electron only spins out strong core businesses when they are ready to stand on their own and when a continued dependence on the parent for capital is a detriment. This approach has found new expression in today’s corporate venture capital operations, where companies like Intel, Google, and Microsoft maintain investment arms that take equity positions in promising start- ups. These arrangements allow the parent companies to explore new business models and technologies through their investments while
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