Tag Archives: innovation

4 approaches to slowing things down in order to get out front

Weeknotes, May 26, 2012

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Yet again this week, considerations about being “ahead” of our clients were in our thinking. This is a relatively complex place to be.

Being ahead of our clients is a condition of being ready to propose concepts and solutions before they have come to an awareness or comprehension of the information that they need in order to make good decisions.

Being ahead of our clients is also an issue of envisioning the concepts and solutions that we are confident will be greatly helpful to them in their enterprise, while they may not yet be ready to accept the “risk” of investing in concepts that leap over the intervening decades of development in workspace thinking since their last workplace design project.

They are typically constrained by a variety of factors – low confidence in making a bold move, perceptions of politics in the organization that may imply risk in bringing new ideas forward, lack of exposure or familiarity with the benefits that could be captured from available concepts and potentials, and other factors. Most of these, it seems, arise from having spent too long in one place managing an existing set of resources without having contact with a world of workplace management thinking and workspace design insight that has moved place-making rapidly forward.

We, however, are generally unconstrained as we enter the situation. We have been working for decades on similar issues. We bring to the current context a cumulative set of investigation, speculation, experimentation, innovation and implementation derived from a succession of clients from a spectrum of domains and with diverse challenges and objectives. This body of experience makes us eager to apply what we’ve learned to each new project.

The challenge, then, is how to reconcile these two very different states of readiness. How do we avoid, as we begin to understand our client’s mindset, adjusting our approach to aim only for the middle or getting stuck in the middle because we must produce while our client learns? How do we, realizing we’ll be unable to achieve the excitement and satisfactions from delivering an advanced concept, avoid disappointment and disinterest in the current context? How does our client avoid disappointment and disillusionment with the eventual realization, on moving in, that they could have aimed further out, should have been carried further out by their designers?

Slowing the process to get out front – 4 approaches

There may be other approaches that can help resolve this dilemma, but here are four to think about and test –

What has your experience been? Have you used these approaches and have they been successful? What other approaches would you suggest? Let us know in the comments, or by email.

Slow the conversation to enrich the solution – In most of our experience, the design team comes to a much more satisfying solution if our client has engaged a creative “consulting” team first. The biggest barrier to breakthrough results is a poorly defined problem. And a poorly defined problem is typically a facilities problem – deliver so much square feet of space for this many people at this budget for this fee in this time. None of that problem definition says anything about what you are trying to do as an organization as you strive to bring value to the world. Start by engaging a curious team who want to know more about your company, your culture, your purpose, and how you are different. Engage a team that is especially interested in your perception of the behaviors of your staff that represent your leadership goals, and the experiences you think they should have that will engage them in achieving your purposes.
Develop, and rigorously apply, a set of guiding principles and success metrics – The goal of your project is not to be “on time and on budget.” Goals and objectives like that mean that the project team is working only for themselves. Instead, prepare and present a briefing on the mission of your organization, the values it holds dear, the purpose it fulfills for its customers, and the challenges it faces. Then engage your design team in an extended discussion around those subjects and ask them to generate a set of guiding principles that will lead them to measurable solutions targeted to advance your organization’s purpose.
Generate and test a good range of alternative concepts – Allocate sufficient resources inside and outside the organization to explore alternatives. Alternative concepts can help to more rigorously define the problem, significantly clarify intentions and develop metrics that matter, engage more in the process and uncover latent or politically hidden problems that restrain organizational performance, and develop solutions that are more creative and more innovative and that return much more for the investment about to be made.
Build a network of inputs around outcomes – I believe that, among the most important disciplines of those who seek to serve their organizational purposes better, one is to build a rich network with others who have done, or who themselves are in the midst of, a workspace transformation project. There can be rich rewards in asking tough questions about what the workspace is intended to do, what link there is between those purposes and what was designed, and what now is taking place in the organization as a result. I have been especially surprised that, in more than two decades of practice, I have never heard of a potential client calling one of references, inviting him or her out to lunch, and asking about how their organization is performing as a result of our work.

Postscript

As a postscript, there is, in all of this, the inherent problem of corporate purchasing. Inherent in projects solicited by an RFP and awarded through competing proposals are faults of trust and speed. The people who will ultimately occupy the spaces we design will have been, usually, poorly served by an internal function that uses a process that squeezes resources for everybody engaged in the process. The spareness of resource allocation demanded by the procurement process means a speed in execution that, in turn, means that users will not be engaged in the discovery and design process, facility managers will be unable to change direction or enrich the planning and design process as their awareness of the mis-aimed intentions of the RFP become revealed, and we as designers will be unable to do much more than speculate about the real organizational purpose and goal and apply a templated solution and cross our fingers in hopes of the best for all.

You don’t compete by purchasing airplanes…

March 22, 2012

architecture, Design strategy, innovation, Strategy design, workplace design

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I’ve been absent from the blog for way too long, totally consumed by a great new project opportunity that should provide lots of good content here.

As I warm up to the task of getting back to writing, I offer this delightful and appropriately inspirational piece that I found in today’s readings. This is from Bryce Dot VC, whom I hope does not mind my capturing this excerpt from his blog –

Last week while prodding a pitching entrepreneur on his competitive landscape I rattled off potential competitor after potential competitor in order to gauge his reaction. After appeasing me for a few of them he paused, mid-sentence, a little befuddled. Then he stopped altogether.

A little exasperated, he said something along the lines of:

Startups don’t compete with airlines by purchasing a bunch of planes, hiring a bunch of pilots and locking up a bunch of terminals at airports. Startups compete with airlines by inventing videoconferencing.

It’s as though he was channeling Buckminster Fuller who said:

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Ghost innovation

January 10, 2012

architecture, Design strategy, innovation, social design, Strategy design, workplace design

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Ghost innovation

This is part of a map plotting various planned but unbuilt subway lines in New York City. Reading it unveils an understanding of past strategies, plans, and objectives that became abandoned due to budget constraints, maintenance priorities and other demands that diverted and then buried the vision. Reading it inspires an imagination of the world that could have been, of a society that might have developed differently, of connections that might have had value but were lost through an inability to efficiently and effectively connect.

Stranded innovation

It reminded me of a recent client, a major consumer products manufacturer and marketer who held what they called a “stranded innovation fair.” It was their belief that, regardless of the circumstances for the loss of attention to or development of these innovations with our application, they might have real value in other contexts, times, combinations or applications. The more that people in the company were aware of these ghost innovations and technologies, the greater would be the potential of their eventual application and productivity.

Hidden talent

In a similar context, some companies are experimenting with rich profiles of the people in their organizations and utilizing certain social media applications to promote those profiles to others in the enterprise. There are people in most organizations with valuable skills and capabilities that are overlooked in the usual day-to-day of operations, or who may have some special skill buried deeper in a resume and unexploited in their current job description or project assignments. By circulating those profiles or using other means to communicate them, these organizations are better able to match the right people with the right projects, achieve goals more efficiently, and gain competitive advantage through otherwise overlooked internal skills and talents.

How can the design of the workspace contribute?

Imagine the potential that lies inside of an organization that is for many reasons consistently overlooked. More interestingly, imagine the power of an organization that has the insight to look back, or look deeper, or promote ghost innovations differently.

Technology may be the more powerful tool for uncovering and developing ghost innovation, but imagine the potential of a more social workplace, as well. How much of knowledge and potential, of skills and innovations, are lost each day due to the inability of people to connect efficiently, to observe others, to understand weak signals, to join a conversation with others.

In their book on the organization and architecture of innovation, Allen and Henn point to the power of work spaces designed in way to support our awareness of others and to increase the potential for our connections with each other.

We think this is the defining challenge for our time.

How can the design of the workspace contribute?

Think big – Grand visions are connected visions. They illustrate for others a path to future development and value, and tend to garner greater support. Even if the final accomplishment falls short, the grand vision leaves “remnants of foresight” that provide others a way to interpret and extend intentions and uncover latent value at the appropriate times.

Redesign the organization before redesigning the workspace – The traditional lexicon of the corporation – organizational charts and individual job descriptions – do not describe the way that work is really done today. If you believe that teamwork and collaboration are the key to higher organizational performance (and they are) then design the organization around those attributes. That redesign will generate a new lexicon of organizational form that the planners and designers of the workspace can leverage for high performance through great work experiences.

Make visible the artifacts and activities of network connections and collaboration – As with the organization, the workspace has to speak to teamwork if collaborative cultures are to flourish. The traditional lexicon of the workspace, like that of org charts and job descriptions, perpetuates forms that are about individuals and managerial controls. The creative workspace is an open and networked space, where team activity and process flows are visible, and adaptable and agile to the dynamics of projects.

If there is any single rule that guides our work for organizations seeking enhanced performance and higher levels of innovation, it is this – Make it visible.

Things we’ve noticed

January 7, 2012

architecture, Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

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How. And why. Not what.

This is a very nice piece on enjoying the “how” and “why” in the process of answering a challenging question rather than rushing to the “what,” the answer.

The process of answering a question should be a voyage of discovery, a journey during which you learn something, and one where you enjoy yourself in the process.

The essay made me think about the invisible processes in business, and also how the places of businesses are not designed around the how and why. If the design and planning of workspaces made clearer the purposes of the enterprise, and if the processes people and teams used to get to the what were more transparent and observable, would an organization learn more, create more valuable knowledge, and achieve more?

What innovators share

Somewhat related to the above is this review in the Ottawa Business Journal of a recent book on the “innovator’s DNA.” The review reflects on the power of “the five whys” while also noting the five distinguishing characteristics of successful innovators.

associating, observing, questioning, experimenting and networking

We’d found our way this week, in the midst of our own annual strategic planning, to a discussion about the uniqueness of the places and spaces where innovation seems most successful. As I carry the images of those spaces, I’m making a resolution to shape our design mission – our client’s “program” or “design brief” for their corporate workspace – into a form that links workspace concepts to these 5 attributes.

That is, since most of our clients are engaged in a search for how to generate and support a more entrepreneurial culture, I intend to test a change of the lexicon of workplace design from conventional descriptors of corporate organization and function (“accounting”) and conventional workplace form (“conference room”) to new terms reflecting these innovation behavior attributes.

I expect that radical transformations in design processes and concepts will emerge.

Augmented reality

There are many things to enjoy and reflect on in this proposal of trends for 2012 from the Smithsonian here and here.

I expect I’ll come back to the list for further exploration and comment, since I stopped almost immediately at the first subject, augmented reality.

In a recent project, we found transformative approaches to design through our slogan of “augment, amplify, activate.” A client had a new workspace designed by others, but then found it experientially flat. It satisfied the organizations, functions and facility metrics of the enterprise, but did nothing to change their culture and performance, which was the purpose of the project in the first place. Our slogan was a motivator to the occupiers and the designers to explore conceptual modifications to support behavioral change and development.

This sense of “augmentation” seems like a rich territory for exploration in design. A while back I had speculated on “the autoupdating workspace.” And more recently, a colleague raised a question about augmented reality which made me think in entirely different terms about the “productivity” of both the principal artifact of our service, digital “drawings,” and the activities that take place in the spaces and places we design. I’ve become increasingly interested in how to build layers on top of our digital design information and capture digital information from the physical spaces we design.

The Race Against the Machine

Related to the above, I’ve just finished reading Race Against the Machine, and am now both tremendously excited as well as terribly frightened.

The motivation for me is to begin to imagine the role of the workspace in assuring the race with the machine. Finding a strengthening signal in the requests we are getting from clients, there is an accelerating realization that space supports enterprise sustainability, but this is increasingly tied to the changes in the way we work together because of the extraordinary acceleration of technology.

We are now attracted to, and attractive to, clients whose enterprise is shaped around technologies that, yes, automate creativity. These enterprises are now, or soon will be, seeking spatial solutions well beyond the most advanced corporate real estate solutions.

The Singularity

And, of course, this.

Focus groups

I am not sure about this, but can’t stop thinking about it. That is, is Facebook a relevant a valuable data source for workspace design? It seems so logical to “crowdsource” criteria and concepts for a satisfying and uniquely productive work environment…how do we best do it?

…and, in case you were wondering

Why humans have chins

Makers of virtual meeting spaces make them in face-to-face space

November 21, 2011

architecture, Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

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Photo by Citrix via Adam Richardson

Perhaps relevant to our last post is this delightful interview by Adam Richardson that I found in a guest blog at the Harvard Business Review. Citrix, the makers of GoToMeeting, have a new collaboration space where the leading work in their innovation process is done. It is fascinating how the makers of virtual work spaces develop their process in carefully considered face-to-face space.

It is not a “crappy” space, and this is how they describe its benefits:

Opening the design collaboration space was a big milestone on our design thinking journey. It’s already played a key role in fostering a more collaborative culture that involves less over-the-wall processes, fewer silos, more and earlier collaboration, and better integration of design into the product development process.

We needed to create a shift in behaviors, and realized this would be best achieved by having people live the change, not just being told about it. The space facilitates this.

Perhaps most significantly, it seems to lie at that upper quadrant of my not-yet-finished diagram in our last post. That upper quadrant is where I speculate that “signature” form but “occupy the workplace” space can generate high performance and engagement.

The interior design is quite minimal. The “beauty” of the space comes from the work that happens inside it: sketches, flow charts, Post-Its full of blue-sky ideas, new product concepts from raw idea to real formation. The space was intentionally left not-too-perfect, so people are encouraged to manipulate it, not be precious about it. It’s intended to serve as a canvas for creative thinking. It’s also very flexible and can quickly change from working studio to lecture room.

It seems also to fit some speculation we were developing about “auto-updating” space.

Like all good design, iteration is part of the process. We have discovered that we do need a better system for engaging remote participants and better ways for capturing brainstorming and meeting notes in real time, so that others can see them later. This is something we are investigating for our next “release” in 2012.

Richardson’s interview is packed with information. I found at least 10 principles for a workplace designed for innovation –

Align the design with your mission – with the “why” and not just the “what” of your business
Relevance to all disciplines supports multidisciplinary work better
Recognize that space shapes the behaviors you want
Your space is an indicator of the authenticity of your purpose
Agile and adaptable space is more valuable than CRE-regulated space
Anytime space supports creativity better than assigned and scheduled space
Casual space supports sharing and trust better
Authentic space recruits
Learn from others and engage users on your design team
Good design strategy reinforces good strategy design

Let me know your thoughts on the article, and your own experience.

Innovation in crappy buildings? Occupy the workplace

November 18, 2011

architecture, Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

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Innovation arises most effectively in “crappy” buildings.

This was the argument advanced recently by Alexis Madrigal in his blog on technology in The Atlantic. As articles like this will do, responding commentary bounced around the internet, and I thought I’d pick it up and toss my own thoughts into the argument.

I’d offer that there is a great fault in the position put forward by Madrigal. The fact that innovation takes place in buildings, and since most buildings are crappy, means that most innovation will arise from crappy buildings. This, however, is not an argument that crappy buildings are best for innovation. Instead, it is the simple statement of the sad condition that we all share – that the innovation we have is only the innovation that has overcome the significant barriers presented by crappy buildings. The innovators in these contexts might best be celebrated for the cleverness that it took to overcome inadequate resources and barriers to communication. But how much have we lost along the way? How much more innovation could we have if more people worked in good buildings?

Apple, Building 20, and the rest of us

A bit of buzz had built shortly before Steve Jobs death over the design of the new Apple headquarters in Cupertino (which he presented rather masterfully before the Cupertino Plan Commission). The design, by Norman Foster, is a perfect circular doughnut of a building, something like the mouse wheel of an iPod stretched over 800 feet, or as Madrigal says, “Keep scaling that idea up and you get Apple’s ultrahip mega headquarters, which is part spaceship and part Apple Store.” It’s an elegantly simple architectural statement, and certainly will be a highly finished building with some very unique construction methods and materials. Most of the parking will be underground or hidden and the site, formerly an HP campus, will be returned to a park-like state.

Madrigal referenced Stewart Brand’s branding of “Low Road” buildings as the places where most innovation takes place, and put out a call for people in search of innovation to nominate their own Low Road workplaces. Madrigal recalled Building 20 at MIT, which no longer exists, as the great model for these innovation incubators – a big, wooden, nondescript building constructed in the economic spareness of World War II. Madrigal also evokes Jane Jacobs (“Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”).

In their own commentary on Madrigal, the writers at m.ammoth.us express a concern about the implications of the argument asking, “if Building 20 is where innovation happens, but Apple’s megaheadquarters are where architects get involved, then is architecture’s relationship to innovation merely that architects get involved with an organization after it has lost the capacity to innovate? Is architecture’s relationship with innovative organizations primarily that it instantiates their ossification?”

In our practice, we are in the midst of a (frequently typical) commission for a place that will act as an innovation incubator. We have just gone through a very quick design exercise to get our foot in a funding stream, and are assessing and reassessing what we’ve done as we now are about to start the “real” design process. Our project will be both about old building as well as new, partially in a “crappy” building and partially in a new design by us.

As we began our initial efforts, examples and arguments like Madrigal’s were in the back of our minds. In front of us was a client with two, or maybe three heads.

We are working for a university and one of its schools, greatly interested in making a major architectural statement for at least three very good reasons – to enhance the perception of the institution, to attract top research talent from around the world, and to act as an innovation incubator for improving the health and wellness of our region. We are also working for its facilities department, greatly interested in making only the sparest and most necessary of moves.

These conflicting perspectives, these competing values, have us moving up and down the scale trying to understand just where is the best place for institutional aspiration and architectural authorship to surrender to innovation legend and occupier/user customization.

A concern

I have a great concern about the kind of logic and argument that Madrigal is trying to advance and that may be embedded in Brand’s work, as well.
The fact that most of the world’s buildings are not “designed” in a conventional sense, but are built naively, designed speculatively, designed without full understanding of user characteristics, or designed for purposes other than they are now being used, naturally means that most innovation arises from those “Low Road” buildings. This does not, however, mean that it is Low Road buildings that are the key factor in innovation success. The innovations that we celebrate may be only a small fraction of the innovation intended and pursued, and which successfully overcame the barriers of an insufficient supply of buildings that ate truly supportive of innovation.

I’d speculate that a significant amount of the failure of buildings to support innovation is a failure to design to support the awareness, communication and combination that we now recognize as central to innovation pursuits.

As a simple example, clients compel architects to design for function, and architects respond with functional designs. That is, clients ask for “conference rooms” and architects design formal spaces for scheduled meetings with chairs around big tables and with pictures on the walls. In these most typical of the contexts that generate anonymous buildings, neither client nor architect has asked about, explored or discussed the value and purposes of the organization and how to design to facilitate the interactions in these and other spaces that best support the development of a shared culture of communication and sharing of knowledge and experience. In fact, most clients directly reject the making of a social workspace, and most of those who reach further naively believe that image-making will be the generator of innovation.

In other words, consider the sad potential that a significant amount of creative output and important innovation is lost because of the inherent barriers in Low Road buildings, and the failure to think critically about how to support the cultures and communications of innovation in High Road buildings.

Architecture is vertical. Workspace is horizontal.

Paraphrasing a frequently reformulated axiom of comparative architectural styles, I’ve offered that “architecture is vertical, workplace is horizontal.” That is, it seems that architecture, carrying the responsibility of big budgets, regulated by codes and ordinances, and contracted (mostly) to large, management-driven organizations, is inherently hierarchical and ordered. The stuff that goes inside of the architecture is lighter, of shorter life span, beneficially adaptable to changing circumstances and occupancies, and is (potentially) less ordered, and (potentially) more democratic.

I’ve used that observation to generate this diagram, and to explore this matter of places and spaces for innovation again.

Architecture is vertical (a placeholder image)

I’ve represented architecture along the vertical axis, naturally. I’ve given it a range from a Low Road of anonymous and apparently non-designed buildings to a High Road of “signature” buildings. Along this range can be the core and shell of otherwise speculative developments to more highly programmed buildings for known organizations and occupants.

Along the horizontal axis is a range of approaches to planning the interiors of these buildings. I’ve used a context of control for the scale here, setting the highly regulated world of corporate real estate at one end, and more ad hoc occupancies at the other. Along this scale can be relatively intelligent but still centrally provided “settings” for specific kinds of work and activities, and less proscriptive and more helpful planning “guidelines.”

It seems that the domains of successful innovation might most typically take place in the upper left quadrant. In this space we would find buildings that are programmed and designed with an understanding of the interactions and communications that are essential for innovation, that build the “awareness” that Allen and Henn have identified as a key underlying value for innovative organizations. The spaces in these buildings might be very unstructured, but might have the resources – infrastructure, technologies, agile assets, operating manuals – that would enable the occupants to take charge of their own working environments and adapt them to the dynamic and changing demands of creative pursuits.

It seems to me that this approach could provide both for highly iconic (organizational signature) buildings as well as rich interior working environments. These conditions would not cause a reduction in creative zeal nor a suppression of innovative activity. They might, in fact, be the contexts that enable the potential for a significantly higher level of creative commitment and productive invention and application.

Happiness, and work progress and performance – Is there a role for the workspace?

September 5, 2011

Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

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There is an increasing body of scholarship and other analysis linking positive feelings and happiness at work to the progress and performance of the organization.

The Gallup organization has been conducting an annual survey and index on “well-being” at work, for example. The more recent surveys indicate a continuing decline in staff engagement as a result of the context and characteristics of the working environment. Amabile and Kramer in their recent book, The Progress Principle, assert that relatively small moves can have a big impact on the feelings of workers and therefore on their individual and organizational performance. In a recent article, they say that, “Our research shows that inner work life has a profound impact on workers’ creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality. Employees are far more likely to have new ideas on days when they feel happier. Conventional wisdom suggests that pressure enhances performance; our real-time data, however, shows that workers perform better when they are happily engaged in what they do.”

Several factors for increased happiness and performance seem to have potential connections to the ways that workspaces are designed. That is, it seems that the design of the workplace, by removing barriers and supporting certain behaviors, can have a significant impact on how people feel and how they perform.

Providing clear goals
Making progress visible
Supporting autonomy
Providing good resources
Supporting learning from problems
Providing support when and where it is needed
Removing obstacles, even minor hassles
Attending to the little things

Consider how the design of the workplace can support these values, activities and behaviors. Here are three quick concepts –

Provide a variety of settings for the varying tasks and activities that make up the workday. This signals a culture in which independent or autonomous moves are accepted. These settings are rich resources that give everybody access to affordable and appropriate shared resources rather than compromise by allocating an even set of resources to everybody.
Design for visual connections. This can help people understand the larger context of their work and recognize the value in their part in the work that is being done. These visual connections make it easier for managers to assess and become comfortable with the progress of the work and, more importantly, for workers to identify and access the right support when it is needed.
Provide places that support casual and spontaneous conversations and make contextual learning a pleasure. Too many managers ask for offices so that they can counsel staff, but an easy chair and a cup of coffee might be the most effective setting for a conversation in which help is sought or an observation about a better way can be offered.

In our work, we guide people to observe and record the physical attributes of their work spaces – things that are barriers to what they want to achieve, and things that support their engagement and accomplishment. We find that the best experiences at work – the experiences of accomplishment of purpose, achievement of goals, and growth in capabilities – have a spatial footprint. That is, great work comes from great experiences that come from supportive places and spaces.

As we’ve said so many times before, the leading organizations of the future will be the ones who “own” the experience of working – by providing the right places and spaces for those experiences.

things we saw this week that you might like, also

August 7, 2011

architecture, Design strategy, Detroit, Strategy design, urban, workplace design

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Among some of the things that caught our attention last week and that may influence our thinking this week are these –

	This is a delightfully simple essay that illuminates the power of spatial experience in moving decisions and closing deals.
	“The idea that cars run free…that idea’s about to change.” Sculptor Chris Burden has been working on this rather remarkable interpretation of “Metropolis” to evoke the energy of a city
	This was a brief but interesting conversation about an apparent bias toward modernism in most design competitions in the UK. This question seems to have its own answer: “Should modernity be preferred precisely because it is innovative and forward thinking?”
	This seemed an unlikely place to find a discussion about the “green workplace” but, once past the intro, is an interesting insight into the subject and, more significantly for me, how a bit of research required by an event led to a deep dive into a subject and then a globally recognized expertise.
	Detroit is struggling to remake itself after decades of irrational and obsessive self-destruction by almost every leader, “civic” or private. We find it hard to accept this preferential apportioning of the limited resources the City has left, feeling it to be a better-dressed replay of prior practices.
	Designer-driven innovation – This is a rather pretty concept to illustrate a debate about whether markets or vision are the optimum origins for innovation

Return to “scenius” – 6 key factors supporting information spillover and communal genius

November 4, 2010

Design strategy, Strategy design, urban, workplace design

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I am very amused by the life and propagation of the term “scenius.” It’s a word that was coined by the musician, Brian Eno, to describe what he called a “communal form of the concept of genius.” It is, in effect, a serendipitous amplification of the benefits of collaboration generated by some very special characteristics of talent and environment.

We had first commented on our interest in scenius in an earlier post, “scenius and workplace genius,” considering the application of its principles in the domain of workspace design and, especially, “creation spaces.” We also discussed there the resonance of the idea in other contexts and precedents. Now, Steven Johnson, exploring the origins of good ideas, has a recent column in the Financial Times also presenting and discussing the concept.

Johnson reflects on his experience in New York both watching the birth of ideas as well as starting up his own commercial ventures. In his examination, there are at least these six factors that characterize an environment that might possibly lead to scenius –

A healthy and supportive community of risk-takers
Visionary programs and people in local educational institutions
Physical density
Shared spaces…and shared people
Places that support casual conversation and information spillover
Multi-dimensional diversity in networks

Johnson is the author of a recently published book on innovation, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation.

[Image: Breakers by Phil Kirkwood via pictory.com]

I am looking for a developer

October 31, 2010

Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

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Everything about work has changed, but nothing of the workplace has.

Work looks different, now.

Major forces in technology, the economy, society and culture have combined in such a way that even the near future will be dramatically different from what we’ve experienced over the past several decades.

A casual recitation of the trends we’ve seen in new ways of working – mobility, agility, globalization, collaboration, crowd-sourcing, innovation imperatives, networked organizations, creative class, work anywhere, etc. – reveals the early components of massive and accelerating change.

And the lexicon of the current and emerging future – work swarms, hyperconnectivity, augmented reality, gaming, simulations, spontaneous work, the collective, etc. – is language that does not yet have counterparts in the world where the design of the workspace takes place.

We are very surprised by the slow pace of change in the planning and design of places for working. We believe that beyond our ability to see and comprehend what the future of work looks like, there are significant forces that constrain our ability to get to where we need to be.

The failure of the discipline of design to match the pace of the emergence of new ways of working will certainly mean frustration and, more importantly, restraint on the ability of organizations to capitalize on the promise of the future.

We think that new institutions and new approaches are necessary to resolve this issue.

The existing paradigms of the workplace are very strong and limit the ability to achieve rapid change.

At the core of this dilemma is the heavily embedded practice of looking to the future from the past. We have spoken before of our resistance to the terms and the articulations of workplace “trends” because we believe that the change taking place in society is so substantial that the future can no longer be extrapolated from the experience of the past or the components of the lagging present.

There has been and, until the Great Recession, continued to be significant investment in the physical infrastructure supporting the way that work used to be done. The office building in best practice, for example, is a form based on past organizational designs and management practices that uses components, modules and metrics to reinforce a conformity to hierarchy, entitlement, and a cellular array of assigned workspaces. Over time, these have generated a well-developed and applied template of core design and placement, floorplate size and dimension, and floor-to-floor heights that shape the organization of work, and even influences the size and displacement of organizations. Form does not follow function anymore; rather function fits form.

Those components, what we call the lexicon of workplace form, also represent a mature economy that has been well developed by furniture and equipment manufacturers, ceiling and wall component manufacturers, and the technologies of energy and communications distribution. This has also bred a generation of workplace design specialists, increasingly constrained by time and fees, who have developed an aura of market and practice area expertise that reinforces the incremental extrapolation and application of “best practice” templates rather than real workspace innovation.

And the embedded resistance to change in the corporation suppresses the mandate for change

Even while accepting the logic for new ways of working, management education and practice has been unable to adapt to and keep up with the extraordinary speed of change in the way that work is actually being performed.

In recent years, even the growing awareness of generational differences has generated merely stylistic differentiation in the accommodation of different ways of working without understanding the substantial emergence of entirely new forms of organization and execution.

The “trend” to make the workplace more “social” by introducing a Starbucks style into the lunch room is but one example of the misunderstanding of the emerging social nature of work, communication, networks and innovation.

The existing institutions are powerless

While the corporation correctly senses that the current form of the workplace is worthless, it has not yet formed an understanding of what form of workplace has value. Workplace design consultants have illustrated that whether through layoffs or through mobility programs or through otherwise unrecognized shifts in how and where work is done, you can walk through the corporate offices these days and not see anybody there.

As the economy continues to press on corporate performance, most companies cannot shed real estate fast enough. The relentless purge is based, at least in part, on the traditional alignment of the corporate real estate function with the finance organization. Human resources, marketing, R&D and the value-generating portions of the organization have not yet assembled the point-of-view, position and power to influence the real estate momentum.

And, of course, the supply side of real estate, for a long time afraid of change, has led the design and delivery of the corporate workplace based on “exit strategies” – the generalization, commonization and commoditization of corporate offices to assure rapid turnover of occupancies even as the demand for a high level of customization and agility begins to emerge.

New institutions are necessary

The sense that the conventional designers and providers of the spaces and places where work is done can not adapt to provide a new model has led some from outside of the domain of “best” practice to attempt to innovate and create.

The Kauffman Foundation, for example, deeply concerned about the pace, volume and success of the entrepreneurial endeavors that power job creation and economic growth, have developed the Kauffman Labs for Enterprise Creation. They have commissioned a prototype space to act as a “test-bed” for the development and application of new modes of organizational design and development under the belief that space matters to people’s performance.

Similarly, Jeff DeGraf at the University of Michigan, has generate the Innovatrium concept. In his work with major corporations, he has found that great strides can be made with executives in an off-site, non-corporate context, but the pace and success of change is lost when they return to the conventional corporate space. The Innovatrium is a prototype to find a physical mode to implant in the corporate office to assure greater success in innovation initiatives.

These are early, small scale models, and there is a lot still missing.

So…I am looking for a developer

Our specifications are still in development and, in any case, we want this to be a mutual and multidisciplinary endeavor. Our model will evolve from design and development, from research and insight, from analysis and innovation, from prototypes and testing, and from new “metrics” around the experience of working.

We’ll return to this subject periodically. In the meantime, here is a very brief review of only some of the things we are thinking about.

The new model will use a new language of workspace design, a new lexicon of form. Since the leading edge of new ways of working is evolving so fast, and since older ways of working are moving so slowly, event the current language of work and design is losing value fast. “Collaboration,” for example, already has the weight of workforce skepticism, and everybody knows that the little table out in the open is not the supporting device. The new language must not carry any burden from inadequate responses from the past.

The new model is one of service, not control. Corporate real estate and facility management have provided things. The metrics of their performance and the limits on their resources have meant that the efficiency of the management of things and the minimization of the cost and amount of things have been their focus. “Standards” and “mobility” are a couple of the ways this is done, and “performance” became a financial, not an achievement, metric. The new model will instead understand and appreciate the importance of the way that people will get things done, and will provide the most effective resources for accomplishing the purposes of the organization.

The new model will be a sustainable model. Stocks and flows may be the underlying concept for the provision of space, not assignment and entitlement. This is at the core of our thinking. Corporate ownership and the long-term implications of real estate investment have combined to generate an inflexible and over-supplied model of space for work. We think a third party approach with a different model of supply is worthy of development and promotion.

The new model will seek talent centers, not cost centers. People will find and deliver success through their expertise and mastery in combination with a context-specific network of other experts and masters. These people will have the choice of being where they want to be, and that choice is increasingly an urban choice, in globally-connected, resource-rich centers. Workspace will come to be comprehended as a community, not a finite workplace.

The new model will focus on the experience of working. We believe that the leading organizations of the future will be the ones who “own” the experience of working. The measures and pleasures of performance will be determined by the people who fulfill the purpose of the organization, and not by the organization. Top talent will move to where they can be most effective, where the constraints on achievement have been removed, and where the available resources activate, augment and amplify their contributions and achievements.

Contact us if you’d like to explore with us how to develop the workspaces of the future.

[Image by -nathan on flickr.com]

—archizoo

The blog of MEREDITH Strategy & Design

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Tag Archives: innovation

4 approaches to slowing things down in order to get out front

4 approaches to slowing things down in order to get out front

Slowing the process to get out front – 4 approaches

What has your experience been? Have you used these approaches and have they been successful? What other approaches would you suggest? Let us know in the comments, or by email.

You don’t compete by purchasing airplanes…