Thank you very much for bringing this topic back to the forefront. There have always been companies who are willing to innovate with corporate structures that include their employees as valuable resources as opposed to ‘bottoms in the seats’ there for a specific purpose and nothing more.

In my experience, a good balance is needed between innovation and the general heirarchy of command.

What generally happens when the belt gets tightened is that the “innovations” are the first thing to go and projects get scrapped. They don’t see the long term ROI as valuable for a project that needs to be fleshed out and would prefer to attempt the short term quick fix when presented with two different options.

Who knows your company better than the people and teams on the front lines doing the work day in and day out regardless of the type of business you are in? There are people in these corporations who do want to add value and it is those types who feel they aren’t being valued that are the first to jump ship and go “value add” somewhere else when the opportunity arises and that fabulous little product or a variation of it is now a product somewhere else that their original company will end up piggy backing on.

These companies need to think about it a little bit more.

I agree with most of the post – but two points have risks attached that could be deadly to an organization IMHO:

Abolish the Hierarchy: <– Someone needs to be responsible for delivery and making the final decision. In a large organization no hierarchy means chaos.

Support Mistakes: <– Enron really supported this in their company culture. Read all about it in the case studies of where they went wrong. Accepting and learning from mistakes might be a better idea. Supporting them is a whole other story. In the case of Enron, they would move people up who would make terrible, expensive mistakes and thought it was wonderful because we learn more for mistakes than we do from success. A corporate culture of innovation – running the company into the ground.

Just my 2 cents.

Caffeine is a better example, but it’s still just a refinement of their core proficiency, not a revolution.

I’d add that I try to stay in touch with individual likes and dislikes. the more I can align someone’s passions with their work, and verbally communicate how important their insights, questions, and thoughts are on topics they’re involved in, the more likely they are to enjoy the work, feel empowered, and open up as to their view.

When they’re not allowed to help set the course of their career in this way, they’re least likely to want to contribute. Because when I’m passionate about something, and I know that passion and my resulting insights are appreciated, I go the extra mile.

It’s amazing how creative people can be when they’re given that opportunity.

The Google homepage switch bugged me, I didn’t like it at all. Funny that I expect seeing images on Bing.