growth, business-structure, company-cultureIn my answer to the question of how Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley, I was reminded of the story of Fairchild Semiconductor, a company who thrived while encouraging employees to take their own innovative ideas and create their own new company based on that idea.
They did this so well that it took a region that had lagged behind in the tech manufacturing industry and catapulted it to the forefront of that field (by not only doing well themselves but also having a network of dozens of successful companies that had sprung up as a result of their original company).
I know there are other businesses that have done similar things (though perhaps not with the same level of result), and I was wondering if there was a name for this. I’d love to learn more about it and read about more examples, but I’m not sure what terms/phrases to search for.
So here’s the core of my question: Is there a name for this way of structuring your business and employee culture so it encourages and even catalyzes new spin-off businesses?
Google encourages employees to spend about 20 percent of their time experimenting with their own ideas and while none have become independent businesses, many are now business units within Google.
This approach created products like: Google News, Google Suggest, Gmail, and AdSense, which is the AD engine that produces roughly a quarter of Google’s revenue.
My question to you is why you would take a system that generates internal businesses and spin them off? (If you provide an answer in the comments below, I’ll update my answer to address the problem you’re seeing.)
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