Designing offices to improve innovation
Office design has many different, interrelated elements, including spatial layout, lighting, furniture specification, material finishes, technology services and catering provision.
Designing offices to release innovation potential within the organisation links the application of a number of design processes (including space-planning, interior, architectural, furniture and lighting design) directly to the realisation of organisational goals.
As the knowledge-driven economy of the 21st century places a premium on generating new ideas and intellectual property, the creation of more innovative workplaces in which fresh thinking can develop and teamwork can flourish has become a central preoccupation for senior managers in many different types of organisation.
As a concept, the 'innovative workplace' responds to a growing recognition within employing companies that the physical working environment can have a profound effect on an organisation's culture and on the individual's performance.
Successive anthropological studies have demonstrated a proven connection between habitat and human behaviour. Today, there is widespread acceptance that the traditional habitat for white-collar work - the modern office - has significant shortcomings in terms of planning, layout, facilities and aesthetics. These shortcomings prevent organisations and individuals from working to their full potential in terms of innovating effectively.
Designing innovative workplaces is not about creating visually 'wacky', attention-grabbing environments. It is about closely tailoring the physical environment to the requirements of developing new knowledge within the organisation.
So what are the key issues at the heart of this concept? Inside any organisation, it is important to ask searching questions about the current office environment - and look at how physical and spatial improvements and the provision of different equipment might support innovation practices.
- Are long stretches of dark corridor and closed doors really conducive to people sharing knowledge and ideas?
- Are anonymous meeting rooms booked by the hour really the best setting for project teams to brainstorm and pin up ideas?
- Is a dowdy and cramped reception area really the ideal shop window for potential collaborators visiting your organisation for the first time?
- Are linear rows of metal desks under fluorescent strip lighting really enhancing the search by your employees for that great new idea?
Five barriers to creating an innovative workplace
Making a more innovative workspace is not straightforward. If workplace design is to act as a catalyst for a more agile, and responsive work culture, there are a number of conflicting agendas which must be addressed to achieve a more holistic balance.
- Traditionally, office managers have been in charge, and employees have had little say over their environment. But does this bring out the best in people? Designing innovative workplaces must reconcile the needs of the organisation with those of the individual.
- In the mix of office-based, mobile and home working, how can innovation be managed? Innovative workplaces must balance the need for fixed real estate against the reality of increasingly flexible and fluid work patterns.
- How much of the office space should be private or privileged (like a club) and how much should be public and therefore open to all-comers? Innovative workplaces must combine workspace with public or social space.
- How much of the workplace investment should go into the bricks and mortar of the building shell, and how much into less permanent interior settings and flexible leases? Architecture and design need to achieve a holistic balance.
- Does your workspace suggest an automaton (reflecting famous architect Mies van der Rohe's belief that an office is 'a machine for working in') or does it express more human values? All organisations need to interrogate the image presented by their workplace.
It is important to recognise these conflicts at the outset.