5 innovations from at-home workers

History suggests Yahoo may be wrong about banning employees from working at home

Photo: Yahoo Inc Chief Executive Marissa Mayer / Reuters

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By Quentin Fottrell

Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) CEO Marissa Mayer banned employees from working at home in the name of innovation. “Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings,” the company explained in a memo obtained by AllThingdD. “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.” See Yahoo internal memo

While there’s something to be said for brainstorming with colleagues over the water cooler, history suggests great ideas often occur on the couch rather than the conference room. Here are 5 examples. — By Quentin Fottrell

Archimedes

Like Yahoo! Inc., the word “Eureka!” tends to come with an exclamation point — and with good reason. In the days before the iPad and carpooling — 200 years before the birth of Christ, to be exact — the Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes hollered the word at a moment of great inspiration. And he wasn’t at work, he was in his bathtub. The volume of water he displaced, he realized, was equal to the volume of the his body parts underwater. With this insight, Archimedes realized he could precisely measure the volume of irregular objects. He was so excited, in fact, he (allegedly) ran through the streets naked.

Kentucky Fried Chicken

Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, Ronald McDonald and the Jolly Green Giant may not be real people. But Colonel Harland David Sanders, the white-suited icon behind Kentucky Fried Chicken, was flesh and blood. His secret list of herbs and spices wasn’ t developed in a food laboratory the way much fast food is today, according to KFC. Sanders came up with at home. He didn’t write the recipe on a TPS report, but “scratched out on the back of the door to his kitchen,” KFC says. After a failed business venture, Col. Sanders, then 65, took his secret recipe for fried chicken on the road to potential franchisees. At the age most people retire, he helped create KFC.

Apple 1

Many of tech’s greatest tinkerers have done some of their most ground-breaking work at home. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, for instance, began their illustrious careers in surroundings that bear no resemblance to the glass-encased Apple Store emporiums. In the 1970s, they spent most of their time building their prototype Apple-1 computers in garage of Jobs’ parents. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, also started the planet’s biggest online retailer in his garage. In fact, he once told Oprah that he got down on his knees himself and taped boxes before sending them off. And Mark Zuckerberg may have enlisted architect Frank Gehry to expand Facebook’s campus in Menlo Park, Calif., but he famously started Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. Of course, these companies didn’t remain home-based for long.

The Beatles

Like tech giants, rock bands have a long tradition of finding inspiration in the garage. In 1957, John Lennon, then 16, started a band with friends from his school. Briefly called the Blackjacks, they became the Quarrymen before settling on The Beatles. The “Fab Four” became the bestselling band of all time. “There’s less pressure and more room for creativity starting a band at home,” says Milo McMahon, an independent musician based in Montreal. “When you’re in a huge, expensive studio and are paying by the hour, you really feel the need to get things done as fast as possible.” Bands have been created in the office, of course: Take The Monkees, the manufactured American copycat band devised as a TV series; Davy Jones and Co. sold around 65 million albums and singles worldwide. The Beatles, on the other hand, have sold over one billion, according to EMI Records.

Harry Potter

Though some writers prefer to work in office spaces, many of the world’s greatest fiction was created at home. Forgoing the security of a regular paycheck can mean riches beyond their wildest dreams — or a life of living on bread and cheese. J.K. Rowling, creator of Harry Potter, tasted both. Today, she has a net worth of an estimated $1 billion, according to Forbes Magazine, and is one of the bestselling authors of all time. However, that’s a long way from the small flat she rented in the early 1990s in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she wrote the early Harry Potter books. Like many people who work from home, Rowling reportedly felt lonely and sometimes went to local cafes to write.