Many companies have their version of an Innovation Day or Hackathon. Atlassian calls them FedEx Days because it sets a timebox of 24 hours; an idea spawned from a FedEx ad campaign with the slogan, When it Absolutely, Positively has to be there overnight. Some companies, Google most famously, also have the concept of setting aside time for employees to work on their own projects; at Google, this is called 20% Time.

Google claims that some of their most famous products, such as Gmail and Adsense, came from their employees' 20% Time. Experience shows though that it is quite difficult to maintain a dedicated 20% Time when teams usually have so much else going on in their current assignments. As we will see later in Chapter 13, The Ultimate Software Team Member, maintaining enough time for individual professional development training requires team members to have a few tricks up their sleeves to make space away from their regular teamwork.