THE FIRST WORD In my day job I have been lucky enough to work with one of the greatest corporate success stories in the technical field ever. For a sparky tech nut just going to the Google? campus was a bit like traipsing to mecca. I remember my first tour there， and getting a “free lunch.” Our corporate contact made a comment. He said， “They’ve created some kind of engineers’ paradise over here.” I kind of wondered about that comment. Over the last couple of years I have pondered it quite a bit. I learned a lot more about what this paradise was in subsequent dealings with the king of search. They had the free food and all these other perks but the thing that stood out most to me from the first time I heard it was 20% time. A quick Google search will tell you the details of 20% time. The principle is simple： You are given 20% of your time to work on a pet project. The project is your choice. The only caveat is that if you come up with something cool Google gets to use it to make more money. In talking to contacts there I found out that time is sacrosanct; your management cannot demand you give up that time for your main goals. You can volunteer it if you want to but it is up to you. In general planning， however， you and your boss plan four days a week on your main assigned tasks and one day every week is yours. Build Intrepreneurs I learned a new term recently that I think is very relevant in corporate growth and success， intrepreneur. The intrepreneur is the baby brother to the entrepreneur. This is the guy who has that big idea and wants to change the world; he has the mentality to do so but doesn’t have the resources. Resources， in fact， is the only way in which they differ. The entrepreneur finds a way to resource his idea， but whether due to motivation or circumstance， the intrepreneur can’t quite get over that issue. Often times these are the shooting stars in your organization. The trick is to enable these guys to make things happen. Give them the resources and turn them loose. The 20% time mentioned above is a great way of finding these individuals. The successful intrepreneur will gather others and use their 20% time to make something cool. What engineer do you know that wouldn’t consider that paradise？