[marcinzm]

I mean, what do you propose in terms of getting a diverse group of engineers to trade off innovation versus choosing boring technologies? Keeping in mind that how much risk the company is willing to take is not the decision of engineers but the executive team. Innovation tokens convey the level of risk the executive team is willing to take in terms of technologies. The alternative I've often seen is a dictatorial CTO (or VP of Eng) who simply says NO a lot which is a lot more demotivating. A large company may do detailed risk analyses but those are too cumbersome for a startup.