Internet giant Google is improving its innovation process to ensure its top management hear about the best ideas much faster than before.
The company, which famously allows its employs to spend one workday per week exploring projects unrelated to their job profiles, has set up a structure by which its engineers will now report ideas through division management channels, while chief executive Eric Schmidt will hear the best ideas at internal ‘innovation reviews’.
The meetings “force management to focus” on ideas that could be developed further, Schmidt told The Wall Street Journal. “We were concerned that some of the biggest ideas were getting squashed,” he said.