This isn&#x27;t bad, per se, and it&#x27;s good to think about, but I want to throw it out there that the only reason 20% time works decently at Google is because of Google&#x27;s culture.  By virtue of empowering employees to find problems and solve them, and being supportive of career dev &amp; internal transfer, and making boatloads of money, it makes it easy for the org to tolerate the slack this forces in defined teams.  Almost none of the kinds of things that encourage 20% projects at Google typically exist in large enterprises, and when those companies try things like this it typically ends up being much more forced and much less organic, for better AND for worse.<p>I&#x27;m glad to read this post.  I tried instituting 20% time in my previous job and almost no one took advantage of it.  They just didn&#x27;t have an adequate level of trust in exec mgmt that diverting their attention from core responsibilities wouldn&#x27;t cause adverse personal reactions down the road.  So sad. :(