Some notes about 3M: • All employees must prove that they have spent the appropriate amount of time working on their own projects. If, during their performance review, they can't prove it, they are immediately suspended from their regular duties until they make up the time. • All managers are chemical engineers. Not only that, every one has developed and sold a product of their own invention. • The president is the manager who sells the most products. If some young engineer develops a product that out-sells the president's products, guess who becomes the new president next quarter. Some notes about HP (when Packard and Hewlett were running it): • All engineers must has an electronic gizmo of their own creation on their desk at all times. This is in case Hewlett or Packard stopped by to visit; they should have something to play with while they're there. • HP developed Management by Walking Around. This was because Hewlett and Packard loved to talk about hardware and wandered around talking to their engineers. (Sadly, other companies which try to implement this don't realize it does not work if employees cannot talk about their work. Just walking around and handing out dictates does not work.) • All HP engineers had to spend two weeks in sales talking directly to customers. Most computers firms won't let their developers so much as smile at customers.