20% or even 120% time has outsized returns for industries that have very high capital costs but minimal marginal costs, such that employees couldn’t do them at home. This was a big deal at 3M (a chemical company) and, for the right kind of nerd, big data.
May I ask for more detail on what this means? All I got from this is that since employees couldn’t work from home (on weekends, say, as one might do in a software role), the net effect of 20% was that 3M got 20% overtime from employees for free. And that the returns on the 20% time were very significant because process improvement/intensification (a primary enjoyable skill of of 3M engg talent) has very high RoI in general.
May I ask for more detail on what this means? All I got from this is that since employees couldn’t work from home (on weekends, say, as one might do in a software role), the net effect of 20% was that 3M got 20% overtime from employees for free. And that the returns on the 20% time were very significant because process improvement/intensification (a primary enjoyable skill of of 3M engg talent) has very high RoI in general.