R&D on Google

We all know that Google came from nowhere, and now rule the search engine web. How do they keep a large company innovative and the employees productive, rather than going flat hierarchy FBI-ish and losing important ideas on the way?

Google... google themselves.....

Google has created an intranet where they can discuss and post ideas (much like this website I suppose). Any Google employee is free to create and post a page of ideas.

Marissa Mayer explains that Google product managers, surf the intranet and look for "that generate the most comments and that seem the most doable" - and every Friday she hosts a meeting where the selected ideas get to be presented by the idea makers and voted on to see if it'll fly. If an idea is approved the idea conceiver usually gets to implement it.

Jonathan Rosenberg, VP of product management stated: "We never say, 'This group should innovate, and the rest should just do their jobs.' Everyone spends a fraction of their day on R&D."

Agencies should take a look at the intranet-posting-forum idea of generating ideas, and Google's honorable way of letting the one who thought of it gets to work on it.

according to reveries, Google went from nothing to 40% of estimated 375 million search engine queries every day. It grows and stays innovative.

wouldn't this be a great idea at an agency? comments please [go easy on me first post].