It's the latest R&D trend: penciling in tinkering time on the company clock. The current craze started with Google's GOOG -0.96%well-known '20% Time' initiative, which encouraged employees to spend 20% of their time at work on a project not related to their job description.
如今研发界的最新趋势是：在企业的作息时间表上加入创意时间。时下这股潮流源于谷歌公司(Google)首创的著名的“20%自由时间”，这一项目鼓励员工在工作的时候将20%的时间用于与自己工作职责不相干的项目上。
Then came Apple, which early in 2012 launched an in-house tinkering program─exactly the kind famously prohibited by its late founder Steve Jobs─known as Blue Sky. More recently, LinkedIn announced InCubator, an in-house program encouraging the company's engineers to develop their own ideas into projects with the promise of 30 to 90 days away from their regular work to develop them.
在此之后，苹果公司(Apple)在2012年初启动了名曰“蓝天”(Blue Sky)的内部创意项目──众人皆知这恰恰是苹果已故创始人史蒂夫•乔布斯(Steve Jobs)所禁止的。再到更近的时候，LinkedIn公司宣布了名为“孵化器”(InCubator)的内部项目，允诺公司里的工程师可以脱离正常岗位30至90天，鼓励他们将自己的构思开发成为切实的项目。
The basic idea is the same: Companies need innovative ideas and products, the kind that usually come from small startups. So why not nurture the startup mentality in-house and reap all the glory and the profits?
这些做法的基本思路是一致的：公司需要创新思维和产品，这些东西通常产生于小型的初创企业。因此，干嘛不在内部培育创业精神，从而名利双收呢？
Well, because it rarely works.
呃，那是因为这种做法很少奏效。
Even when done right, institutionalized playtime has its limits. Many of today's companies have the best of intentions when they sponsor 'hack days' or 'hackathons, ' hoping to inspire even the lowliest drones to step forward with their brilliant pet projects. In practice, though, these structured 'fun time' activities are the contemporary equivalent of the dreaded corporate retreat (pass the medicine ball).
即便是在处置得当的情况下，制度化的创意时间也是有局限性的。如今很多公司在发起“创意日”或“创意马拉松”时初衷都是很好的，希望哪怕是最下层的员工也能够得到激励，拿出自己锺情的优秀项目。但在实际操作中，这些制度化的“开心时间”活动和以往那些不受欢迎的公司休闲聚会（比如传递健身实心球啦）没什么区别。
Scheduled playtime at work is actually nothing new: 3M began its 15%-time program in 1948. And Hewlett-Packard HPQ 0.00%had tinkering time scheduled for Friday afternoons after lunch from its earliest days. Both companies squeezed big products out of these free-form creative sessions, from Post-its to laser printers.
工作中安排创意时间其实并不新鲜：3M早在1948年就开始执行它的“15%自由时间”项目了。惠普(Hewlett-Packard)从早期开始就在周五午餐后安排了创意时间。两家公司都通过这些无拘无束的创意时间获得了一些重大产品的创意，从即时贴到激光打印机，等等。
As for Google? Gmail, Google News and AdSense reportedly all evolved out of 20% Time. But even Google has its limits: In July 2011, it shut down Google Labs, a platform open to the public that allowed commenting on the latest Google 20% projects. Last summer, it retrenched further by requiring managerial approval for a tinkering project.
至于谷歌呢？据说Gmail、谷歌新闻(Google News)、广告联盟(AdSense)都是在20%创意时间里产生的。但即便是谷歌也有其局限性：2011年7月，它关闭了谷歌实验室(Google Labs)这个向公众开放、允许公众对最新的谷歌20%项目进行评论的平台。去年夏天，谷歌采取进一步紧缩政策，要求员工自行鼓捣的项目必须得到管理层的批准。
Today's corporate employees are heavily monitored, both in terms of time and resources. For most of them, commanding them to tinker at the company's expense is understandably terrifying. They've got enough to do already, thank you very much. Innovation, at its heart, is a torturous, anarchical act. True tinkerers are dilettantes, free-form creative types motivated more by their own curiosity than by the bottom line. In short, they aren't the kinds of employees most big companies like adding to the payroll in the first place. Also, being ordered to tinker robs the activity of personal passion.
今天的公司员工无论从时间上还是从资源上都受到了严密监控。对他们中的大多数人而言，命令他们自由捣弄、费用由公司买单，是会吓着他们的，这一点是完全可以理解的。谢谢你们的好意，但他们已经有够多的事情要做了。创新，其本质就是一种折磨人的无序行为。真正的创意者都是些业余爱好者，他们的创新形式自由，因自己的好奇心而不是因最终的费用而产生创新动机。简而言之，他们不是大多数大公司一开始就愿意雇佣的那种员工。而且，被人命令去鼓捣新玩意儿让这种活动失去了个人激情。
So, if we can't institutionalize tinkering, how do we get more of it?
那么，假如我们无法将创意行为制度化，我们怎样做才能更有收获呢？
Procter & Gamble PG +0.39%has earned much praise for its Connect + Develop program, which partners with external companies to convince them to innovate for P&G. Short of acquisitions, this may be the most efficient way to inject the verve of a promising startup into a big company.
宝洁公司(Procter &Gamble)以其“外联+发展”(Connect + Develop)项目而受到普遍赞誉，通过该项目宝洁与外部企业建立伙伴关系，说服他们为宝洁创新。除了并购之外，这也许是将一个前景光明的初创企业的活力注入一家大型企业的最有效的途径。
Another model to consider is a private-public hybrid. The German engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg toiled for nearly a decade at the Fraunhofer Society, a German research organization funded by government investments and corporate contracts, to develop a way of transmitting high-fidelity music over phone lines. In the end, he came up with the MPEG-3 technology that spawned the MP3 file-sharing music revolution, the ultimate prize for music fans.
另一种可以考虑的模式是公私合作。德国工程师卡尔海因茨•勃兰登堡(Karlheinz Brandenburg)为研发可以通过电话线传送高保真音乐的技术，在弗劳恩霍夫协会(Fraunhofer Society)辛勤工作了将近十年，该协会是一家由政府投资和公司合同金共同提供资金的德国研究机构。最终，他推出的MPEG-3技术引发了用MP3文件共享音乐的革命，对音乐爱好者来说这可绝对是一个终极大奖。
A more radical idea may be to allow tinkerers to profit more from their innovations than the companies that sponsor them. Fusenet Inc., a Toronto-based software company, allows technical staff to spend every Friday working on projects of their own design. Individual employees own the rights to anything they develop. In return, they give Fusenet the right of first refusal to invest in any commercial venture that results from the innovation.
还有一种更加激进的做法，那就是允许创意者比赞助他们的公司从创新技术中获得更多的利润。总部位于多伦多的软件企业Fusenet Inc.允许技术人员把每周五的时间用来研究自己设计的项目。员工个人对他们开发的任何东西都享有所有权。作为回报，对于因创新而导致的任何商业运作，他们给予Fusenet公司优先受让权。
The wrong approaches to tinkering mostly require employees to shoulder a burden that managers themselves don't: the true risk and consequences of complete aimlessness. The right ones demand creating within the corporate framework a space of genuine creative chaos without clear goals, where repeated failure is a real and constant motivator.
在鼓励创新这件事情上，多数错误的做法都是错在要求员工肩负经理们自己都不承担的责任：完全盲目的行为所带来的切实的风险和后果。那些正确的做法则是要求企业在公司的框架内营造一个没有明确目标、但却具有真正创造性混乱的空间，在此空间里，反复的失败才是创新真正、持续的动力。
Not surprisingly, most reputable organizations aren't ready to take that leap. But they should be.
不足为奇的是，大多数声誉良好的机构都还没有做好迈出这一步的准备，但是它们应该行动了。
Adapted from Mr. Foege's 'The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great, ' published this month by Perseus Books.
（选自Alec Foege的新书《爱鼓捣的人成就美国伟业：业余爱好者、DIY爱好者和发明家赞歌》(The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great)，该书本月由珀修斯图书集团(Perseus Books)出版。
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