In our first book, The Entrepreneurial Mindset, we suggested that companies achieve focus by allocating time to projects across different levels of uncertainty. In reading the Business 2.0 of December, 2005, we discovered that one of the darlings of today’s investors, Google, practices the same technique. Googlers call it the 70/20/10 rule:
“We spend 70 percent of our time on core search and ads. We spend 20 percent on adjacent businesses, ones related to the core businesses in some interesting way. And then 10 percent of our time should be on things that are truly new.An example there would be the Wi-Fi initiative…” Citing CEO Eric Schmidt.
Very reassuring to learn that the advice works well in practice. For more, see the article in December 2005 Business 2.0 “The 70 Percent Solution”.