That's why Bubblegum is an application for a nascent market: people who have the new Smartphone Windows Phone 7 software inside. The phones have been on the market for a few months in the United States. (Four models, including the Focus of Samsung, HTC Surround and the Quantum of LG, are each 100 $ at Microsoft).
But if many people are chosen in a crowded field led by iPhone and Android-based devices, these new phones will be required a large dose of an essential aphrodisiac: smartphone apps by the armload that add games, social connectivity and many other features.
Because the platform is new, developers must learn its ways before writing many of these programs. So adding them quickly, Microsoft took an unusual step. It has relaxed a strict rule and enable employees moonlight in their spare time and keep the resulting intellectual property and the majority of revenue, as long as this second job is to write applications for devices based on Windows Phone 7.
And did not do the job safely. The company is party downloads pizza for workers who step write code for the platform and are planning ways to publicize their work, including posters and recognition awards, said Brandon Watson, Director of developer experience for Windows Phone 7. Free phones based on Windows 7 you are given to all employees in 19 countries where phones are available.
The disadvantage is that if an application does not catch, there's money in it for employees who developed in their spare time. This makes it a less attractive incentive than, for example, some of those of Google, which has a policy of allowing engineers to spend 20% of their paid time on projects of their choice that benefit society.
But the change of rule change Microsoft is a starting point for a company that, like so many others, has traditionally been its engineers to give their all to their core jobs, said Michael a. Cusumano, Professor of management and systems engineering at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also co-author of "Microsoft Secrets" and the author of the recent "Staying Power," which has various chapters dedicated to the company.
"Engineers all work hours; They Punch a clock 9-to-5, "said Professor Cusumano. "Normally, you want employees to pay their passions in their jobs. If they do something on the other hand, you don't cheer them on. "
Mr. Watson of Microsoft, said that the change in policy emerged in part because of a boost from its group. "We tend to have strict black", said the company. "But we changed the rules so that developers can do in their spare time and have the financial advantage and the result of work".
The company is offering what Mr. Watson was a standard split on sales app: 70 percent for developers, 30 per cent to Microsoft.
The stimulus seems to help. More than 3,000 employees have registered to submit apps, he said, and so far have been published about 840.
One is Bubblegum. It was written by a married couple recently, Sriram Krishnan, program manager working for the company's cloud computing platform and Aarthi Ramamurthy, program manager on the Xbox team.
Mr. Krishnan, said that the app was definitely done in their spare time. "We were on our honeymoon in Hawaii when we started working on it," he said. "But we like to write code." (Continued to work on it during the Christmas holidays last year.)
Mr. Krishnan, said that with the app, he wanted to be among the first to capture the user base of Windows phone. He hopes that the app will give rise to a network of mini-social to your site, bubblegum, where users will be able to share photos. "The value is how many people are on it," he said.
He is worried that his side projects could raise eyebrows at Microsoft, and has already written a second app, a Web browser, for Windows phone. "Shows a test and a pick you. Microsoft is O.K. with that, "he said. "They were very favourable".
New rules of MICROSOFT, adapt to the wider rethinking how large companies manage the research, said Josh Lerner, Professor of investment banking at Harvard Business School. "Microsoft is not only rewarding people for what they do in their spare time," he said, but is also "harnessing the energy at the ends of the company" to catch up in the mobile market.
"It is symptomatic of a transformation bigger," he said, as a society to unlock more entrepreneurial activity, incentives and rewards for researchers in the hope that it will stay put rather than switch to other companies.
Professor Cusumano agrees that the change of rules promoting entrepreneurial activity. "Need companies like Microsoft who stick around for decades to reinvent yourself regularly," he said.
"Microsoft has been knock their heads against a wall, building more bells and whistles for Windows that anyone needs," said Professor Cusumano. "They can use their own staff in this way. It is a way to make every potential entrepreneur programmer and helps Microsoft intends its new mobile platform.
The change of rule provides an option for employees who do not want to leave for the insecurity of a start-up but still recognition for ideas, said Daniel h. Pink, author of "drive: the Surprising Truth about what motivates us."
"This is another way of saying, ' work here, and you can have the best of both worlds, ' as an employee of a company and as an entrepreneur," he said.
E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.
