The promise of open offices was that by eliminating walls and doors, employees would happily collaborate and come up with innovative ideas at shared desks and next to water coolers.
The reality was that most employees despised them and tried to compensate for the lack of privacy with headphones, Do Not Disturb signs, and other creative methods to reclaim personal space.
Yet, as companies are contemplating their return to office plans, one of the biggest arguments for in-person work is to regain the opportunity for spontaneous collaboration. That’s simply not how creative ideas are born, says Natalie Nixon. Nixon is the president of Figure 8 Thinking, author of The Creativity Leap: Unleash Curiosity, Improvisation, and Intuition at Work. She joined me on the latest episode of The New Way We Work to talk about how teams can work together to come up with creative ideas even when they aren’t in the same place.
+INFO: Fast Company
