Freedom.

Business freedom comes in many forms but the most sought after nowadays, seems to be the Silicon Valley, campus style, chino wearing, one day off a week to yourself kind of freedom. Google became popular with the tech and innovation crowd when they decided to give their employees back 20% of their time to work on projects they were deeply passionate about, that may have not been in their normal work brief. It's lore now how Google Earth, Gmail, Google Maps and a myriad of groovy and funky ideas became reality from this percentage vision. All kinds of companies have tried to copy the process and integrate it into their work flow but for many it turned into the table tennis championship of the lunch room with no innovation or creative ideas bought forth for the company future.

It was thought that this free thinking platform was really only suited to the free wheeling, bean bag loving, frisbee throwing, no ties ever environment of the online and tech style companies.

Yet the 20% idea goes back 60 years before Google, 1948 in fact, and it's interesting that Google don't confirm or deny whether they were the first company to look at what many companies call "daydreaming time" or as HP call it, personal creative time . It was actually 15% and 3M were the first company to look at giving their employees time off to dream, innovate and create new products on company time.

Just like Google, 3M ( Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company ) had their epiphanous moments which continue to this day. We've all heard the Post it Notes story of Art Fry and his attempts to keep the page in his hymn book without dog earring the pages. Every year 3M employees get together over events based on ideas thought up in that 15% downtime from "real work" and present and look for feedback to see if they may not have the next Post it Notes. Examples to come from this event, such as clear bandages, light reflecting film, non bleeding painters tape and non blunting abrasives are all big sellers for 3M who have over 50,000 products and nearly 23,000 patents, many coming from the 15% time, giving them over $20 billion in revenue.

It all seems such a great idea with hindsight goggles on, but 60 years ago it was a brave move to take people out of production lines and give them room to think and most importantly the confidence to fail as they forged their "innovate or die" strategy. For employees past, present and future, freedom is a powerful motivator to stay with a company and also to join a company. What for many companies still feels like a "soft" benefit has become a business strategy for companies like 3M, HP and Google.

Masking and cellophane tape may have been the catalyst to turn the sandpaper company around but the company's focus on it's people and their creativity was to be the reason it has survived and prospered till now. Accepting levels of failure, hard to do for many companies, was the way 3M showed faith in its people and they have certainly recouped that trust.

With 60 years of success shown by 3M and employee choice Google enjoying the same fruits of success from staff freedom, how does your place stack up?