If it's the innovator's dilemma they are trying to solve, they might need to reread Christensen's book. The problem is not only that good ideas don't surface in a large (typically successful) organization, but that they can't attract the levels of resources needed to nurture good ideas from inception to scale. Giving your development team time to explore ideas they come across during the rest of the week might give your people a sense of self fulfillment, but are these efforts really backed up by the commitment and processes needed to fully vet ideas and see them through to launch? For small scale efforts, low commitment and ad-hoc processes might suffice, but for ideas that might truly transform a company, that seems far fetched.
There are a number of companies, including BrightIdeas and Spigot, who are trying to provide a technological solution to the problem of innovation management (apparently, the challenge already has its own name). But technology is only one piece of the puzzle and it seems doubtful that a pure technology solution will be viable. Entire mindsets need to change in order for companies to be able to leverage the aggregate knowledge and creativity of its people... even for companies like Google and Twitter.
Another point that someone in the comments section of the TC article pointed out is that the Google 20% policy might only apply to engineers. If the problem space that the 20% program is meant to target is restricted to the problems that engineers see and appreciate, then that might make sense. If Google is trying to make "information" more accessible to the rest of us, then it seems strange that they haven't spread their net a little wider in search for problems that are really begging a solution.
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