Microsoft Garage is a Microsoft program that encourages employees to work on projects about which they are passionate, despite having no relation to their primary function within the company.
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18 Facts About Microsoft Garage
2.
The Microsoft Garage is a global program with locations on the main campus in Redmond, Washington, and several others spread all over the world, and a website that launched in October 2014 to share experimental projects with customers.
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3.
Project teams that want to move their ideas forward, Microsoft Garage resources include collaboration with experts to help accelerate project development.
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4.
Teams that win the annual worldwide Hackathon, produced by The Microsoft Garage, get to meet members of the top level leadership teams to discuss their project and receive direction.
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5.
Microsoft Garage originated in 2009 in Office Labs in Building 4 of Microsoft Redmond campus with Office Labs GM Chris Pratley, Quinn Hawkins, Jennifer Michelstein and Joe Coplen.
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6.
The impetus was that Microsoft Garage needed a safe space where employees could pursue ideas that they were passionate about, even ideas that were not part of their day job, or things that might "fail fast".
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7.
The Microsoft Garage was originally called "The Office Microsoft Garage" and was limited to projects focused on office worker productivity.
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8.
At the time of The Garage's founding, there were several other better-funded programs inside of Microsoft focused on grassroots innovation including IdeaExchange.
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9.
The Microsoft Garage focused on supporting employees who were already building their projects and were willing to build it themselves vs seeking funding.
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10.
Soon employees with projects not focused on office worker productivity asked if The Office Microsoft Garage could be expanded to include other groups and Pratley agreed.
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11.
However, rather than directly funding science fair or SLACs for groups outside of Office, The Microsoft Garage would seek an internally champion within the business group to obtain funding from the group's executives.
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12.
Microsoft Garage volunteers assisted Truong by designing and developing the installer and setup for Mouse without Borders.
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13.
In late 2013, a dedicated Microsoft Garage facility was built in Building 27 South on Redmond campus, and Microsoft Garage activities like hackathons and hands-on coding sessions were occurring on a regular basis.
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14.
In early 2014, Satya Nadella, as the new Microsoft Garage CEO, began to socialize the priority of having a “growth mindset.
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15.
Garage principles were well aligned to the growth mindset, so when the senior leadership team at Microsoft wanted to evolve the Company Meeting to align to their new vision and support culture change, a Garage-type hackathon seemed like it had potential as a company-wide event.
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16.
In October 2014, The Microsoft Garage launched the first set of lightweight, cross-platform apps created by incubation teams across the company.
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17.
In February 2015 Microsoft Garage launched a new wave of Android and Windows Phone applications, one of them previously being a Nokia application.
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18.
In January 2016 Microsoft Garage announced plans to open additional facilities in other Microsoft Garage worldwide offices.
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