> If I had a crazy idea, I was encouraged not just to tell people about it (up to and including executives), but to implement it and see if it tested well with users.
Yes, the ones who looked at the whole Google background images debacle and decided they were prudent all along to put some sort of QA in place. (Despite all the conspiracy theories, Google putting background images on google.com for everyone without an option to turn it off was genuinely a bug made by one developer who pushed it out without needing approval from anyone else.)
That's very much false. I've worked with several of the engineers who were involved in that, and they went through all of the standard code & UI approval procedures. There was a bug in the ability to turn it off, but that also went through all of the normal code review & approval channels, it just wasn't caught.
Are there companies that don't encourage this?