Columnists
May 23, 2019
From storage to stowage: what neuroscience teaches us about work
by Helen Owen • Comment, Workplace design
Insight into the way things work can often come from the strangest and most difficult places. For Jill Bolte Tayor, a neuroscientist well versed in the theory of how the brain works, her particular insight into the practical functioning of the brain came as a result of a stroke she suffered in 1996. What she […]
May 20, 2019
Adversity and chaos can help to foster creativity 0
by Paul Goodchild • Comment, Workplace design
We may live in a knowledge economy in a world, where the most highly-prized people as far as employers are concerned are knowledge workers, but the thing that sets us apart from the machines is not knowledge at all, but creativity. Acquiring managing and sharing knowledge is essential, but it’s what we do with it […]
May 16, 2019
Working from home and the future of work. How quaint 0
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Property, Technology
In 1962, a professor of communication studies called Everett Rogers came up with the principle we call diffusion of innovation. It’s a familiar enough notion, widely taught and works by plotting the adoption of new ideas and products over time as a bell curve, before categorising groups of people along its length as innovators, early […]
May 10, 2019
A balanced approach to stress has its benefits
by Brendan Street • Comment, Wellbeing
Stress is an unavoidable part of everyday life and our bodies are hard-wired to respond to it. It’s often wrongly labelled as a sign of being unable to cope, but in reality, manageable stress can give us the boost to perform better at work. When we view the demands placed upon us as close to/exceeding […]
May 7, 2019
Hiring the best people is bad for creativity
by Scott E Page • Comment, Workplace
While in graduate school in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I took a logic course from David Griffeath. The class was fun. Griffeath brought a playfulness and openness to problems related to creativity and other issues. Much to my delight, about a decade later, I ran into him at a conference on traffic models. […]
May 3, 2019
Is stress killing creativity and innovation in your organisation?
by Alf Rehn • Comment, Wellbeing
Around 90 percent of CEOs state that they are displeased with returns of their investments into innovation. Companies invest in innovation projects, hire innovation consultants, run innovation workshops, and send their best and brightest to conferences and courses on innovation, yet fail to see the magic appear. Angered by this, many companies double down, throwing […]
May 1, 2019
Your company has a culture, whether you have designed one or not
by Jonathan Richards • Comment, Workplace
Company culture has been in the spotlight even more than usual recently, with stories continuing to surface about the impact that it is having on businesses. The most recent being Revolut, who were called out on their questionable culture and business practices. The issues were put down to “growing pains” and a lack of budget. […]
April 24, 2019
The meteor strike of coworking and the beasts that will remain
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Property, Workplace design
The concept of coworking has only been with us for a short time, but there are already signs that it is evolving into something rather different. The most common misperception about the way evolution works is that it is based on some steady progression, driven by the merciless principle of survival of the fittest, with […]
April 11, 2019
What lift design tells us about who we are and how we work
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design
In 1959, cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman identified the personality traits which go hand in hand with disproportionate levels of heart disease. These include an overblown sense of time urgency, a desire to fit as much into each second as possible, excessive competitiveness and aggressiveness and frustration when other people are doing things more slowly […]
April 8, 2019
Navigating organisations through digital transformation
by Ian Tickle • Comment, Technology
It’s hard to escape the digital disruption that is reshaping not only the world we live in, but the fundamental way that businesses operate. Greater levels of data exchange and automation are creating new layers of innovation, shifting functional workflows to agile systems. And to prosper in this upheaval, leaders must look at how they […]
May 27, 2019
The workplace revolution is already here
by Tony Antoniou • Comment, Workplace design
We should all count ourselves privileged to witness first-hand the most dramatic changes in working practices in over two hundred years. This workplace revolution has been brought about mainly by technology which has allowed freedom of movement through Wi-Fi and cloud technology. This freedom has been embraced by the smart companies, allowing their people to […]