Snippet: Apple Encouraging Personal Projects ☇

Jessica Lessin of The Wall Street Journal:

Earlier this year, Apple told some employees about a new initiative called “Blue Sky” that allows a small group of staffers to spend a few weeks on a pet engineering project, according to three people told about the program.

It is a more limited version of similar initiatives for hatching new ideas that have long existed in Silicon Valley. The most well-known of those is Google’s “20% time,” which allows employees to spend up to a fifth of their time on projects outside their normal responsibilities.

This is a good way to encourage growth and development of Apple’s products—I’ll be curious to see what (if any) future things come out of projects from random employees.