Setting up a Technology R&D culture

Part of retaining and improving the competence people in any company is to give them the ability to learn new things. Most companies do it in a half-hearted way and as an afterthought, giving a day here or there for employees to tinker with new stuff. And it defeats the purpose to put structure and measures on an essentially creative activity.

So here's how we are going about building up this capability. We zeroed in on the following principles to put together our approach..

1. There should be well defined goals, but no formal processes in place. Think of it as internal skunkworks.
2. The activities should be team driven - its not just about one lone guy tinkering in a corner.
3. There should be some urgency and time boxing, but no hard deadlines

Will it work? Our first effort is focused on google v8 and node.js -- its interesting and different, and we think its potential is a little more than just building a scalable network app. The goal is:

1. To build an interesting app using v8 and node.js
2. that highlights its core features
3. and delivers insight into its future possibilities
4. and can be sent out to potential customers as a proof of our capability

We've given ourselves 3 months of our spare time to do it -- and will post the results as they happen..