Separate innovation from execution structurally

Everyone just came straight into this new org that I built, everyone did not have any responsibilities in the existing part of the business.

"That methodology" refers to the three-horizon innovation framework where horizon two/three are longer-term projects (3-5 years out), and EPD stands for Engineering, Product, and Design teams.

Not to say that there aren't teams at Microsoft who might also use that methodology, but where we've been really maybe explicit or intentional about it is at GitHub where we've actually ring-fenced a team to think about that horizon two and horizon three work and kept them separate from EPD.

We find a single engineer who is extremely entrepreneurial, understands what it means to operate at tempo, understands what it means to make decisions with low information, understands how to work very, very quickly with a design partner... And during this intervening time, they're also recruiting a team of usually 2, 3, 4 other engineers who kind of have that same zero-to-one mentality and they start building.

One key attribute is there's one clear driver of the project, who's effectively a founder. I guess maybe you could have two or something, but really clear, there's driver of the project and also there's one clear decision-maker that they go to.

There are two elements for that. One is having the right people with the right mindset on the team, allowing them and giving them the bandwidth and freedom to innovate. And the second thing is that we're focusing on making things real. So we're not keeping them far or in disconnect from the product and engineering.