We just had Antony Mayfield of iCrossing UK deliver a morning keynote on innovation. He brings up the example of Google. Fresh from a tour of Silicon Valley, where he met with the Google guys, Antony relates how Google harvests its good ideas from employees and brings, on occasion, one to market. Google estimates that each year employees contribute about 4,000 ideas worthy of consideration. Of that, 300 are discussed seriously, 30 are vetted (replete with a production team) and two actually make it to market. You might think Google is interested in all good ideas. Not really. In fact, Google talks about "killing good ideas". Only the best ideas make it to market in such a system.

Where does that leave us, those of us who don’t work for a massively innovative company that has a market cap larger than some many gross national products?

All companies, Antony says, are obligated to find the time in the work week to innovate, even assigning managers to oversee the activity. It’s a particularly good idea in the fast-moving social media realm. The market is changing so rapidly you need to take time to stand back and analyse what’s happening and inspire the troops to respond intelligently. How much time? 20 per cent of the work week should be dedicated to this brainstorming time ("slack", as Google calls it). That’s one day per week (for the lucky ones who work a 5-day week).

Have you scheduled your innovation time yet this week?