I’m all too familiar with the issue, having been in the museum sector as a web person for years, and now working with local government and HE. The over-engineering, project management and *weight* of projects is typically incredibly intense. They gain a momentum with size and time, and this momentum – as you point out – often hinders rather than helps. I talked about the huge weight of process in a recent post, and also the need to accept that amazing things can bloom when perfection is lacking. “Skunkworksey” projects can work on assumptions and imperfections because with no budgets and small teams they usually can’t fall very far when things do go wrong. Which they will, with innovation in the equation.

The balance between innovation and – how can I put this – what many see as “the real job” is almost always broken, but badly needs fixing. In both my previous job and the one I’m in now there is absolutely the tacit understanding that “under the radar” is the only way to get things done.

I’ve written consistently about the need to play, and about how “justification” of this playing simply won’t come in the short term. An innovative concept is almost always a hole in the ground financially and in time terms, certainly in the first stages. Accepting that innovation will only come from cost is something that many company boards simply won’t swallow. They should, but they don’t. The Google 70/20/10 way of working is all very well, but try selling it to executives: “Yes, we’re going to spend 30% of the time we were spending making money innovating instead. Income? No, probably not. Risk? Oh yes, pretty high”.

In my experience, the best way of approaching the issue of surfacing the sub-radar projects is to innovate in small skunk-worksy teams, make something really cool and useful, then roll it out (possibly internally) until it is a tool that everyone wants in on. Once momentum has gathered, the executive usually sits up and notices.

We involve individuals on specific projects in a very “1% solution” way – how much support they will provide, how much influence they will have on the decision makers and how much impact they will have on the project.

…or you could go for the google approach of giving people 10% of their working week to think up & take fwd innovative ideas.

It’s hard to deny that ‘joining up’, ’sharing’, ‘co-ordinating’ and so on are all jolly good ideas in the spirit of efficient use of taxpayers’ money. But though that might be true in the short run, longer term you’ll find that all that sensible, corporate joining-up is a massive drain on the team’s ability to deliver and above all, its creativity.

There’s a strong argument for more skunkworks in government (a couple of people, more or less ignored, for a few months, with the tacit permission of someone smart and senior enough to give them air cover) in order to really push innovative approaches forward.