that is cool that they give you the free time. I hear that some places, like google, give programmers like 20% of their time --- a day a week -- to explore personal project and development. Wish we could do that where I am, even if it was 1 day a month.
of couse, I probably log about 10 to 20% of my time as "research" anyway which often has no current business purpose or is even spent on personal (not-commercial) projects. In the end, its personal development that translates to best practices for future work and suggestions for better ideas for our clients.