Ben Gilbert is an enthusiastic person, passionate about being an Eagle Scout and the theater, and his hiphop dance skills that come in handy at weddings.
But Gilbert gets really excited when the talk turns to innovation, problem-solving, startups and new business ideas. His eyes get brighter. His words come even faster.
That makes Gilbert a natural for his current role leading The Garage, Microsoft’s 5-year-old incubator for employees’ passion projects.
The Garage, and Gilbert’s approach to running it, is one-way a more “collaborative” Microsoft is establishing itself as the company transitions from software giant into a devices-and-services company. Trying to foster a more collaborative company culture, as well as one that’s more agile and innovative, lies at the heart of a company reorganization that former CEO Steve Ballmer began in July and that new chief executive Satya Nadella is continuing.
The Garage is both a physical space - actually, two physical spaces - on Microsoft’s campus and a community that spans several countries and many interests.
From its beginnings as a lab for Microsoft Office folks to experiment with innovative ideas, The Garage has become a company-wide effort, where engineers, designers, hardware tinkerers and others from many different teams gather to work on their own or with others on pet projects, some of which could potentially benefit the company.
The newest Garage facility is an airy space in Building 27 in Redmond, Wash., accessible via a floor-to-ceiling sliding glass wall. The inside houses computers, laser cutters, 3-D printers, computer-controlled embroidery machines, soldering irons, breadboards and other staples for coders, tinkerers and designers.
Over the years, about 3,300 Microsoft employees have participated in Garage events and created some 10,000 projects - everything from robotic arms to a motion-sensor-controlled LED wall to a data-visualization video where all the bugs from a team’s past year of releases were represented as aliens being shot down by laser cannon, a la Space Invaders.
Some of the projects have led to inclusion in Microsoft products or releases.
Examples include Mouse Without Borders, a free, downloadable program that allows users to control up to four computers from a single mouse and keyboard; Bing Ads Keyword Distribution Graph, which helps advertisers visualize the effect of certain keywords; and Forgotten Attachment Detector, an attachment reminder that works with Outlook.
Garage has been one of many efforts Microsoft has undertaken over the years to try to spur innovation - something the company has been accused of not doing nearly enough of, allowing Apple, Google and other flashier companies to rush ahead.
And it can be hard for individual employees in a company as enormous as Microsoft to make their voices heard, even if they do have innovative ideas.
What makes Garage different, and has allowed it to survive when other company-mandated innovation efforts have not, is that it’s employee-driven, its advocates say.
“When someone has an idea, that person is extremely passionate about it,” Gilbert said. “That leads to them working through the hard times and not giving up. The whole principle behind The Garage is you can’t propose an idea and have someone else work on it. Because you’re going to care more about it than others.”
Its mission also would seem to align well with newly appointed CEO Nadella’s emphasis on innovation and collaboration.
The webcast of Nadella’s first employee question-and-answer session took place at The Garage, and he sent a tweet in support of a recent internal company story about it.
Gilbert, 24, who took over about a year ago as program manager for The Garage, is a friendly, gregarious computer-science major and entrepreneur from Ohio.
He is part evangelist (spreading the word of The Garage’s mission and methods); part entrepreneur (selling his colleagues and higher-ups on its values and merits); part matchmaker (finding out what people and teams are working on and bringing together those with complementary skills or working on similar projects); and part programming guru.
He oversees a spate of Garage programs, such as the popular Stay Late and … nights, which include Stay Late and Code, Stay Late and Draw and Stay Late and Build, where employees write code, sketch, paint, design or tinker with hardware after work.
Since taking over, Gilbert has increased the number of hackathons - in which people get together to collaborate on programming focused around a certain theme or project - from three a year to once a week.
Four times a year, The Garage hosts science fairs where the fruits of the Garagers’ labors are shown.
Though Microsoft, unlike, say, Google, doesn’t allot a certain percentage of time for its employees to work on their side projects, it does allow teams to schedule hack events at The Garage that can take place during the workweek.
Teams set aside a certain number of days - the Yammer team takes five days each quarter, for example - when employees can work on things they think would make any current or potential Microsoft products better.
For the Stay Late series or other events that aren’t scheduled by work teams, employees work on projects on their own time. (Anything that emerges from The Garage, though, is still Microsoft’s intellectual property.)
Gilbert also keeps in touch with about a dozen geographical chapters, from Beijing to Hyderabad, India, to Tallinn, Estonia; and about a dozen interest-group chapters, ranging from Bing and Skype teams to maker groups (those who make their own things - typically hardware - fueled by a do-it-yourself ethos).
“I love working with great people who trust each other, where everyone has a different skill set and adds a piece to the puzzle,” he said.
Business, Pages 19 on 04/14/2014