The Future of Innovation: A WORK PIAZZA

The following is a contribution from Jack Lofland on what is the future of innovation. To see his profile: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jack-lofland/11/296/413

The future of innovation will do well to remember that good ideas break rules, but great ideas solve problems. Applying this principle to the American corporate work environment means that it is not enough for architects to design yet another variation of the corporate office tower and rely on furniture systems to create the interior. While the design may break the rules, it must solve the problem of creating a holistic solution that fuses a creative exterior with a corresponding work environment that bonds the human factor environment with corporate strategies to tap creativity and innovation.

What are those strategies? Surprisingly, there are many that run similar to one another across the corporate world. Considering today’s mobile and self-deterministic workforce, a work environment must stimulate the spontaneity and creativity that parallels and characterizes the fast pace of the work being done today. I remember reading years ago about an interesting association. It linked how the excitement inside a local Starbucks needs to be established inside a corporation so people would want to show up and stay at work.

Our thinking is associative: one idea makes you think of another regardless of how logical the connection. Work environments must connect people together with ideas in a number of creative ways to foster a kaleidoscope of associations. All too often work environments have been characterized by visual uniformity and banality, place dependency and a lack of human connection.

Our craving for visual stimulation and desire to be surrounded by people is seen in our gathering places, like an open market or coffee shop. We love the visual foreplay. Is it any wonder that the UK’s largest bookmaker Ladbrokes is launching their poker site into the Italian market beginning this year? Big surprise that the movie Avatar is so popular with it’s creatively conceived new world and 3D effects. We were born to be creative and thirst for the stimulation that allows for the explosions of our ideas to be birthed. Why don’t more corporations get this picture? It isn’t just about supporting the facets of work - it’s about also supporting the inner creative facets of our human curiosities.

The more often you do something in the same way, the more difficult it is to think about doing it any other way. This is to say simply that change is difficult. I’ve often thought that corporate work environments look so structured because they were trying to control the workers. After all, the ideas for the expanding office came originally from the factory floor concepts of the assembly line. There’s an urgency to improve our office settings not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because we need a renaissance in human centeredness. We need a rendezvous with the synergy of creative activity.

I remember a sad story of how a company had launched its’ success on the synergy of its’ people. They were in an old building, crowded, no walls, everyone in touch with everything around them. They had created a buzz of activity and energy. Every person could see out any window. When they needed to expand, they created the typical boxed work environment reminiscent of the maze. Their synergy died at move-in. Gone were the associations with creative work that drove their creativity and innovation. Gone were their views out to nature.

So you ask yourself, “What might an Italian piazza and a solution to the bland work environment have in common?” The Italian piazza, the very core of the community, is a magic balance of nuance and human scale that has grown beautiful through usage over many years. You can feel the electricity of being both the spectator and the one being observed. For the ancient Romans, towns were formed by their crossroad thoroughfares - the cardum and decumanum - and these spaces were considered sacred ground. Best Buy in Minneapolis formed a crossroads experience with what was called the Hub. It is the space where there is this buzz of activity and people at the crossroads of five building segments. What I’m suggesting is that this sacred space should not be the appendage to the work environment, but the actual place of work. I suggest we do the unexpected and bring the outside in. The Hub is the place of work.

One particular challenge is to strike a balance of tolerance that the Italian piazza allows with its’ anything goes boundaries. Our technological freedom today is causing a decreased importance of the individual work station with place dependency. So with our new found freedom, where we choose to work often is a decision about how much privacy or interaction we desire with others. This varies with our work needs and changing attitudes/desires throughout the day.

So along with our solution for creating the Italian piazza as our place of work, we need places of quiet - places with varying degrees of solitude. I envision a large open circular area with stimulating colors, architecture, and people open to view the skies above with high surrounding mixed-use enclosures for more isolated quiet work - all capable of viewing the area below and above. It would be like a Roman coliseum of creative activity. You could both participate directly in the openness of the main floor space in the center with the buzz of people around you or separate yourself from the open forum with degrees of privacy, tiered levels, and controlled visual links to the center on the periphery on higher floors. You are both the observer and the observed, quiet or surrounded by sounds, always connected to views of the outside.

Break rules, but solve problems. The Romans had it right - design an elliptical form, like a natural form in nature into an amphitheater for spectacular people events and combine it with the Italian piazza concept to create a center of people connections - only now make it the center for creativity and innovation as a place of work and connection. It would be similar to working at the Guggenheim Museum - and that wouldn’t be a bad thing would it?