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?

2010: with the scent of a woman

When I see consumer statistics in the United States for 2010 I keep telling myself what a great idea was to launch a publication such as Mujeres&Cia (this article was originally written for Mujeres&Cia, an online publication targeted to women in business). Let’s understand why.

As we approach the end of the year, we normally review what has happened and we try to anticipate how would the future look like. This year we are closing a difficult year and also finishing a decade, so this revision-projection exercise is more important than ever.

2000-2010 has been the most innovative decade I had lived so far; a decade in which as marketing professionals we have been forced to learn something new almost every day and adapt our strategies on product design and marketing communications accordingly. Personally, I loved the challenge!

Many significant changes have taken place during this decade, however from my perspective, the most noteworthy changes came as a consequence of Internet’s broad penetration and the revolution it meant. While in 1990 there were only 9 websites, by 2002 we had 40 million; email became the preferred communication channel with 183 billion messages a day, not to mention Facebook becoming one of the largest countries in the world with 350 million active users. If not yet convinced about what the Internet means to society, just note that in 2006 one in eight couples in the United States met online.

Incredible data, but part of our past. As an expert on marketing and innovation what I really like is to look forward to understand tendencies in order to design and construct our future. So let’s take a peek at some interesting numbers.

2010: the traditional US family is no longer a majority

Married and with two kids? You used to be part of the majority and during the next decade you’ll become a minority, representing only 22% of homes in the United States. The remaining 78% will be composed of couples with no kids, singles, single parents with kids, and families formed by “yours, mines and ours”.

If you are in marketing...this data should be seriously taken into consideration.

2010: more Pink than ever

(Before you continue reading, be advised that what follows is by no means a "feminist" approach. Much to the contrary is only an "opportunistic" approach. Having been advised, now...enjoy the data that follows and let your mind dream of new strategic approaches).

Finally, a piece of information that opens a wide range of questions and opportunities: from the 5,9 trillion dollars spent in the United States, women account for 4,3 and 73% of household expenditures. Meaning, that 2010 will probably be more Pink than ever.

Whether we like it or not, in this world numbers rule our lives and consumer spending data is the most relevant for an economy. Do we need more women in business?

By now, we have enough evidence that women and men perceive the world in a completely different way. Doctor Louann Brizendine, a neurobiologist from UC Berkeley, best selling author of “The Female Brain” and founder of the Women’s Mood and Hormone Clinic at the University of California at San Francisco demonstrated how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what we value, how we communicate and how we love. Dr. Brizendine said on a media interview “If we pay attention to those differences we will be able to make better decisions about our lives”.

However, if consumer spending is by far “controlled” by women and, on the other hand, there is enough evidence that women and men perceive the world in a different way, then my first question is why the percentage of women in executive office positions is only 13.5 percent and almost 30 percent of companies don’t have women executive officers at all? Wouldn't companies (specially those whose target are women) benefit from having more women on board?

To me, this figures prompt a lot of questions, as for example: what will happen with booming machist economies like India and China; will they grow at the same pace even though they are not giving women an important place in business?

In marketing, will we continue to see a lack of female talent? Are men going to keep designing women shoes and high heels? Are we going to finally find in hotel rooms make-up removers next to shaving creams?

How great is to start a new year and much more a new decade that will definitively have the scent of a woman! Greetings for 2010.

Leadership

Today I received an email from an unknown source which, beleive it or not, I have read. It had some interesting thoughs, which I have used as a base for this posting.

. The director administers; the leader innovates.
· The director maintains; the leader develops.
· The director focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
· The director relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
· The director accepts reality; the leader questions it.
· The director focuses on the short-term view; the leader has a long-term perspective.
· The director asks how and when; the leader asks what and how.
· The director has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader has his or her eye on the horizon.
· The director follows; the leader originates.
· The director accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
· The director follows the rules; the leader creates them.
· The director does things right; the leader does the right thing.
. The director handles problems, the leader manages opportunities.

I wish you a happy, innovative and leading 2010!

I can be reached at marianaferrari@procesoi.com