Motivation, an important concept in management theory, can be defined as: “the reasons why people do the things they do” (Zenisek, 2009). A company that effectively motivates its employees will often achieve better results than one that does not. One motivation technique is innovation time: giving employees the freedom to work on their own projects as part of their normal workload. These projects are entirely self-managed and rely heavily on the employee's creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. Innovation time is a beneficial policy for two reasons: it can facilitate the creation of new revenue streams, and it exemplifies the positive aspects of academically accepted theories of motivation, particularly the Job Characteristics Model (JCM). Google and 3M, two very successful companies, attribute much of their success to the use of this motivation technique. Allowing employees time to innovate and work on projects not directly assigned to them by management is an effective way to motivate staff in today's competitive economy. Before examining the benefits of time spent on innovation, it is important to understand the foundations of the theory. Fundamentally, the idea of ​​giving employees time to self-direct in the pursuit of creative projects involves supporting the personal interests and entrepreneurial spirit of the innovator (Dackert, Looke, and Martensson). The technique aims to reduce employee turnover and increase productivity. The idea for Innovation Time is attributed to an incident that happened at 3M. A 3M engineer received a direct order from a manager to stop working on a personal project during business hours. The employee ignored his manager's request and, as a result, invented what would become one of... middle of sheet of paper ......ction/06/feature/24/34/83/index_printer.html• Girard, B. (2009). The Google method. United States of America: No Starch Press.• Google. (2009). Google Financial Reports. Retrieved October 21, 2009, from Google Investor Relations: http://investor.google.com/fin_data.html• Google. (2009). The life of an engineer at Google. Retrieved October 21, 2009, from Jobs at Google: http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=about.html&about=eng• Govindarajan, V. (2002). Case Study: 3M Corporation. Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Dartmouth College.• Langton, N., Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2010). Organizational behavior: Concepts, controversies, applications (5th edition ed.). (K. Pruesse, ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA: Pearson Prentice Hall.• Zenisek, T. (2009, October 1). Lesson 4 - Motivation and confidence. Ottawa, Ontario.