The 24/7 learning environment: A thoughtfully designed work environment can foster creativity and the exchange of ideas - Innovation - Workspaces

Training & Development, Dec, 2001 by Stephen Swicegood

Environmentalists use the term ecotone to describe the area where two adjacent ecosystems overlap. An ecotone has an ecology all its own and supports forms of life nor found in the adjacent systems. The U.S. cultural equivalent of an ecotone is between the old economy culture of industrial production and the new economy culture of information exchange. In that uncharted territory, the need for employee learning and development has never been greater. But people process information differently than they used to.

As the economy moves from creating things to creating knowledge, the ecosystem, an ever-changing organic network, serves as the model for a healthy organization filled with spontaneous growth and complex, dynamic human interaction.

The health of an organizational ecology is measured by more than its financial performance. The Balanced Scorecard developed by Robert S. Norton and David P. Kaplan suggests at least these key dimensions of business performance:

* customer positioning

* work-process effectiveness

* employee learning and growth

* financial strength.

With respect to employee learning and growth, idea\span, a design firm based in Atlanta

[_NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] www.idea-span.com points to these key success factors: ideas, people, and spirit. Ideas are the currency of the future. They break down barriers, create opportunities, and enrich lives. At idea\span, we believe that the workplace, the physical working environment, can be a powerful tool for employee development. A thoughtfully designed work environment touches employees and influences their behavior all day, every day. We also think a physical work environment fosters creative idea generation.

The ideas

There's no such thing as sustainable competitive advantage. "Everybody knows what everyone else is doing. If you've got a lead, the competition will be right there with you three months later," says Kevin Roberts, CEO of international advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. "Only those companies capable of creating industry revolutions will prosper in the new economy."

Creativity is a phenomenon that's poorly understood. Many people think it's a gift exclusive to geniuses and eccentrics. In fact, creativity rarely involves completely new or original ideas. Most creative work integrates existing information into unusual syntheses or juxtapositions, with only minimal novelty.

Another myth about creativity is that inspiration comes in a blinding flash after a long, solitary pursuit. In actuality, making associations across conceptual boundaries is more often the product of collaboration: several people looking at a problem from different perspectives. So, the work environment needs to foster interaction. A great way to get people interacting in a relaxed manner is around the rituals of refreshment. At the venture capital firm Armada Venture Group, that meant combining a think tank and a kitchen into a "think-kitchen" with wired lounge chairs for extended collaborative work as well as a counter for informal banter over morning coffee.

Coca-Cola, a 100-year-old institution, also gets the idea thing. "We're coming out of the dark ages at Coke," says Coca-Cola Americas president Jeff Dunn. "Innovation is what's going to help us turn around our business and our culture."

Coca-Cola Enterprises's executives remark that they often learn more about what each other is doing at work while sharing a snack at their assistants' desks than in structured meetings. Idea/span's response was to design an Executive Cookie Bar where Coca-Cola leaders could get together regularly without hovering over their assistants, who have work to do, after all.

Creativity also requires flexibility and openness to risk taking and a willingness to adopt unconventional points of view. An organization's work environment can send a powerful message about convention. If you doubt that, just say, "Dilbert" and see what kind of world comes to people's minds. When a company provides a soulless Dilbert environment, creativity and innovation won't be forthcoming. In contrast, when Hewitt Associates, a leading human resources consulting firm, decided to create a workplace expressly to stimulate creativity, it purposely threw away the rulebook. The company's new geometry of space, materials, and colors are decidedly unconventional in order to send the message, "It's OK to think outside of the box here!"

Some insurance companies are getting creative. For Assurant Group, a Fortis company, idea/span created a space designed to get people thinking like entrepreneurs. Industrial light fixtures hang from a raw slab to simulate a garage. The walls are covered with tack-able panels, and movable easels everywhere support visual thinking. Creative toys strewn throughout remind people to approach business problems as if they were kids trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle.

Add the people

No matter how creative your work environment is, however, innovation won't flow without the right people. In a less-than-robust economy, companies are searching urgently for new ways to foster old-fashioned loyalty and commitment. That means identifying the traits of model employees, figuring out what they want in a job, and seeing that they find it at your company. Compensation, benefits, and advancement potential remain fundamental, but the best and brightest workers can find those elements in many places. So, how does a company differentiate itself?