WHITE NIGHTS
Somewhere on the border of Helsinki soho, while my lovely neighbor is continuing his drag party for the third night on the row, I feel privileged to sit on my couch and enjoy the sunset. Finnish summer. Vanilla sky, Olympic Stadium tower…Helsinki on its best.
The view reminds me every evening why sleeping becomes obsolete and my life has an importance. It is a source of energy, inspiration and motivation. Something special, that most of us miss from our daily lives, including work.
Tom Kelly’s “Art of Innovation” made me to revisit this self evident thought. Despite of having an interesting, challenging, motivating, self-esteeming, well or enough-paying, ego-boosting and bullshitting jobs, we tend to end up working at locations or within spaces, which feel like “work” or “office” rather than a place one enjoys spending time in. Why? Cost efficiency combined with what-we-think working morals? Most likely.
But…putting it other way around, or into opex perspective (sorry, I am too much of an economist), still companies end up spending huge amounts of money into spaces which do not support communication, inspire innovation nor make people enjoy their time at work.
Tom claims that the investment pays off. The idea I really liked in Kelly’s book was around “Enabling individuality while creating neighborhoods”. Create an office space which supports different teams to formulate and design their own spaces = neighborhoods, or communities. Encourage people to bring their hobbies to work. Rather use less space than too much. Fantastic.
I would love to have a piano in my office. Or a day-nap room to survive the sunset jetlag!
Excelently composed piece. Hasn´t this idea been brought up like in every decade? It´s a good idea though. I think Red Bull has gone pretty far with this type of HQ planning. In my view it´s kind of hypercapitalism if you really give it a thought. Management rather sees you happy and effective in your work milieu. Turn up the cost-effectiveness! Nice Inka!
Those levels of corporate development, in which you can feel like home at work, make the athmosphere more productively friendly. However, there is an established cost innefective culture around companies, specially those with an unkind perpective of their employees´s satisfation.
Manuel,Caracas.
Life inside corporate innovation becomes more challenging constantly. As an vehicle for better productivity and rewarding atmosphere workspaces work well. Even tough the idea is not new, the management has true requirements to improve efficiency and competitiveness inside organization. The idea of using space as an inspirational effect is still very up-to-date. The solutions vary during decades, and the knowledge about management through these solutions is developing. In a environment, where ideas and culture are the channel to competitive advantage, it is still obvious and rewarding to see these actions functioning. Besides visual and usability purposes are the behavioral and cultural aspects, which should be managed parallelly and holistically with spatial design and corporate branding.
Nice view.
Juha
a piano in the office? are you serious??? while i was working for a weekly paper long time ago – we happened to had this. mmm… our editor-in-chief was – quite too keen on lloyd-webber “stuff”. needless to add: he was a little more an editor rather than a pianist. so: if there’s a place called “hell” – there’s lloyd-webber, playing 24/7…
besides: we had real barbarian plans like filling the damn piano with loads of styrofoam, glueing the keys into a monolith… whatever.
besides: a day-nap room – really great idea!
:)
peeter, estonia