The Skill Of The Future

FORCING AN INDIVIDUAL TO BE CREATIVE, AGAINST PAY, DEADLINES, AND WITHOUT BREAKS, LEADS TO ANXIETY AND PERFORMANCE ISSUES

- Apurva Purohit

EXHIBIT A: In 2004, Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in a move then unheard of, announced in their Founders’ IPO letter to prospective investors that each one of their employees was free to devote one full day per week (20 percent of their time) to any fresh or existing Google-related passion project. The letter famously quoted the duo as saying, “We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner.” Not coincidentally then that several of Google’s most well-known products like AdSense, Gmail, Google Maps, Google News, Google Talk, and Orkut, were born out of this rather ingenious move!

Exhibit B: In 1930, a soap company, Kutol Products, started manufacturing a wallpaper cleaner – a non-toxic, non-staining, reusable modeling compound to clean coal residue. Kay Zufall, a nursery school-teacher and wife of Joe McVicker, nephew of founder Noah McVicker, saw this pliable, putty-like substance and was struck by a brainwave – why couldn’t they market the doughlike product to kids as a toy? The trio called the cleaner Play-Doh and started publicizing it aggressively within the kids’ toy segment. Within the next few years, Kutol, which was at the brink of bankruptcy then, was out of its financial turmoil. In 1991, Hasbro acquired the brand and now Play-Doh is one of its best-selling products!

It’s amazing what creativity, fresh thinking, and innovation can do, right?