Creative hubs, co-working spaces, innovation incubators, collaborative campuses are increasingly emerging across the globe, offering individuals the choice of where, when and how to work. Technology is rapidly evolving, blurring boundaries and allowing many to work without the need for a permanent office.
However, a significant proportion of individuals continue to desire a physical need for community, to have access to a space that provides a sense of identity, to be part of a culture to which they can attach values, independent of their personal goals. Where, traditionally, a large corporate presents a vision and expectation of these values on to their personnel to uphold, the modern worker today expects those values to be shaped around them.
So is it ‘out with the old and in with the new’ more innovative designed ways of working for us all? Is this even realistic and how can organisations be inspired to be proactive with design led changes, opposed to being typically reactive and think that it’s enough to simply refurbish their place of work every 5-10 years to keep up with the Jones'. Do we even want to change our working spots and adjust to modern methods, when lets face it, many of us are creatures of habit.
Change is arguably always for the better, but is workspace design in danger of responding too quickly to fads? Innovation isn’t something that can be forced. You can't necessarily have a room called The Innovation Room and expect great things just to happen.
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| Bletchley Park |
It's a wonderful parody that great innovations are often seeded and grown within a workspace, be it an office, factory, warehouse or laboratory. The workspace as a backdrop for the process of testing, analysing, refining and implementing ideas, such as the development of the first computer at Bletchley Park during WW2 or the discovery at CERN that allowed the internet to grow from a need for better academic collaboration.
Although incubators and accelerators like Beta-I i Lisbon, Wayra in London and of course Google campus are born to promote entrepreneurship, innovation and inspire a generation of ideas; the majority of workplaces rarely encourage let alone see the value in providing space and time to innovate. Surely growth, opportunities and success of businesses begin with the ability to think and work in a space that fuels this.
So is there a place for innovation in the design of current and future workspaces? Is there a real need for more innovative solutions to enhance and improve how we work? Or will our thirst for technology drive our 9 to 5 towards innovative ways of working that we can’t even begin to imagine yet…?
Burtt-Jones and Brewer asked a series of inspiring thinkers to comment on this paradox, from within the Workspace Design industry and from without. Below are their enlightening thoughts. Let’s start the debate. You might even disagree.
Thought provoking stuff - it's a lot to comment on. But I will confine myself/resolve the discussion to 3 angles which I believe are different but complimentary:
ReplyDeleteSpaces for actually innovating: From a lab to an art studio these places give you the kit, the atmosphere and the comfort you need to do innovation. This approach assumes that people, when they are in them, are there to innovate and there's no ambiguity. We call the 100%Open office a studio and just doing that subtly changes what we think we're doing there.
Spaces that encourage creativity: More ambiguous and dual purpose such spaces would be appropriate for mixed roles or for people that have a creative component to their work. So there's a window to stare out of and different zones as a minimum.
Spaces that encourage collaboration: A key component of innovation is the juxtaposition of people and their ideas and experiences. Why is it that interaction in many workplaces is limited to the water cooler or corridor conversations? Online is transforming the nature of interactions at work. So what would an online version of your office look like? What would a real-world version of your social media network be like to inhabit?
I do also think that the approach to a work environment itself needs innovating. Like architecture in general or much design it's the preserve of the expert rather than the user. This is changing in most walks of life from NPD to communications so why not engage the workforce in the design of their environment or crowdsource ideas for public spaces?
Hello,
ReplyDeleteWhat a fascinating start to a blog. This is an area that a global group of us has been researching for over a decade. The first thing to note is the growing gap between the better qualified workers – Knowledge Workers if you like – and the majority.
In general terms Knowledge Workers are seeing the advancements and growing freedoms in their environments. These are the people who can take their i-Pads to Starbucks, work from home and develop their own working schedules.
Meanwhile, the “over managed, over monitored, majority” (Paul Morrell) are stuck in a Taylorist cycle that has been reinventing itself for over a century. For example the first ‘lean’ office appeared at the end of the nineteenth century (e.g., see Sears in Chicago). The first ‘clean’ desk was specifically developed by Steelcase in 1915 to assist managers in the supervision of their charges. Flexible working was developed by Josiah Wedgwood in the 18th century. Our conclusion is therefore that there are no New Ways of Working for lower status staff. The term is a misnomer; it and Flexible Working are simply euphemistic phrases meaning ‘to cram more people into less space with more or less design flair’.
There are a number of reasons for these unfortunate, perennial business choices which go beyond this response but in passing the main driver is a conflation between the disparate concepts of ‘cost saving’ and ‘productivity’. This elementary, sloppy and dreadful error leads directly to appalling working experiences for millions which – all the evidence suggests – impedes productivity.
Progressive design then is generally the preserve of the privileged, people like us, the Knowledge Workers, the ones most likely to be reading this blog. In support of our style of working environments the data overwhelming point to the efficacy of good design. In experiments, good (i.e., enriching) design improves well-being by up to 40% compared with a lean, flexible space. Productivity meanwhile improves by about 15%.
So the answer to “Should innovation be at the heart of workspace design?” is definitely a ‘yes’? Actually the answer is a clear ‘no’.
Design innovation has its place and should certainly be available but its function should not be central. Again the scientific evidence — which is about as impartial as possible — is clear. The most effective workspaces are found where workers can recognize and realize their own identities in their own environment. In short people appear to be happiest and most productive in spaces where they can change that space so that they see themselves reflected from within it (e.g., “I helped choose that colour”; “I decided where to sit”, “look at my souvenir from Egypt”).
Yet business spaces tend to reflect the identity of managers and designers. These groups are generally the commissioners and developers of the space but not the people at work within it. This is why offices can look terrific but perform suboptimally. Thus Red Bull, Microsoft, Google etc can point rightly to working environments that are an improvement on what most other businesses are doing given the proliferation of lean, six sigma etc. But whilst supporting this claim, the research is equally clear in suggesting that expensive, state of the art design (which may incorporates carbon fibre slides, gondolas, pool tables etc.) can be easily improved through the joint application of design and psychology.
The science is clear in pointing to identity and psychological comfort (well ahead of physical comfort) as crucial mediating variables. The evidence is robust, reliable and transferrable. Without maximizing staffs’ psychological involvement in the work space, designers are professionally hamstrung and their effectiveness lessened.
The key design component then is not innovation but consideration. So much so that cutting edge design does not really cut it at all.
Hope this is sufficiently intriguing. There is plenty of research material for anybody interested.
Happy New Year,
Craig
A very interesting blog and subsequent comments. The design of work spaces is something that I see businesses undervalue all the time. It is so often about fitting people in to what is available cheaply and quickly; rather than designing spaces to fit the needs and preferences of the people in the whole team. But as with so many other design services, it is not because people don’t understand that it would be a good idea, it’s that it rarely becomes a priority for someone to allocate it time and budget to move it beyond ‘a nice idea’.
ReplyDeleteThis is about the people running the company or managing the budgets, so I would agree with other comments made that work spaces are more often a reflection of business owners and managers than the changes in technology.
Similarly, I believe it’s people, rather than spaces, that create the ability to innovate. Those people that desire and benefit from innovation or creativity will be more inclined to have work spaces that support it. Those work spaces then signal to new team members or colleagues what the working culture is like. But, I don’t believe that innovation should be the main aim. Innovation is great and the rewards for success are high, but it is risky, expensive and incredibly challenging – in short, it is not for everyone.
Most companies I see would benefit most from some ‘good and professional’ work space design because this would be a vast improvement on the poor spaces they put up with. ‘Good’ can pave the way to ‘great’ because the rewards in morale, productivity or staff retention will have proven themselves and further investment can be justified. Trying to persuade the majority of businesses to shift from functional-at-best environments to innovative ones is not appropriate in all but a few exceptional cases. Instead, show them how they can gain from doing more than a de-clutter and a reshuffle of desks. It won’t require an Innovation Hub or the very latest technologies or trends, but I would argue that the level of transformation would be greater across the board than that of the few true innovators.