[username90]

It is really hard to do though. Google tried to do it, but when you reward middle managers for innovation you get a lot of half baked projects soon to be shut down, like current Google. Or if you reward them for stability as Google is increasingly doing then innovation stops almost completely.

[enumjorge]

Didn’t Google pull it off in the beginning? If I remember correctly, some major successes like Google Earth came out of Google’s famous 20% policy. I’m not sure what changed since then. Maybe it’s not something that scales easily?

[bryanrasmussen]

It's true that there were some early notable 20% projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20%25_Project#Notable_projects

[psyc]

Google Earth was acquired. Formerly Keyhole, IIRC.

[oblio]

Gmail was an acquisition, Google Maps was an acquisition, Android was an acquisition, Google Docs were an acquisition, I'm actually having a hard time thinking of a major Google project that's not an acquisition except for Google Search and Google Ads (and even there, I think they acquired DoubleClick early on and that boosted their ads business a lot).

[psyc]

All but gmail. That was created in house by Paul Buchheit.

[oblio]

Ah, I thought it was based on an acqui-hire of Oddpost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddpost

[jannes]

The Wikipedia article says that it was acquired by Yahoo and turned into Yahoo Mail.

You may have confused Google with Yahoo?