A clock-building mentality

It's heartening to see one major, successful corporation that respects the minds of its employees, and gives them a nurturing environment to experiment, be creative, innovate, and have a hand in imagining then building the future of their company.

One idiotic response I've heard from people who started a Web-based business: But Google has so much money! Right, maybe, if you could let go of the conceit that you are the smartest people on Earth, you'd realize that Google got to where it is thanks to their clock-building mentality (as opposed to telling the time of the day with somebody else's clock). Pushing employees to think and create is the opposite of enforcing a strict hierarchy and screaming at them.

Google engineers are encouraged to take 20 percent of their time to work on something company-related that interests them personally. This means that if you have a great idea, you always have time to run with it. ... many cool technologies have their origins in 20 percent time, including Gmail, Google News ... when the thing you really want to work on is to make a broad change across the whole organization, you need something new — you need a “grouplet.” [NYT]