May
7
Collaborative Offices – the d.school and IDEO
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Education and Love for Learning, Entrepreneurship, Ideas and Thoughts
Great article from fast company on the Standford d.school – ditching the cubicles and going for project based work spaces. The d.school’s grand opening was today. Thanks to Mike Levinthal’s help on Orabrush, Jeffrey and I met William Burnett in their open conference room a few weeks ago and Professor Bernard Roth gave us a tour of their building. The kinds of projects they’re working on were fascinating (pumps for under $20 to change a community for example).
The students we interviewed to help us with product design were all extremely high caliber people and product designers. Very difficult choice.
Dave Kelly, who’s a schoolmate of Mike’s, also gave us a tour of IDEO. The culture of those organizations really opened our eyes to an incredible way to set up offices. I loved how they hung their bicycles from the ceilings (sounds like the tree houses we built as kids). Thanks to Kathleen (Dave’s assistant) for helping set the interviews up for us!
We’d like to recreate something similar at the Provo Town Square or some other place with character for Orabrush. If you know of any places in the area that we could do something creative with, we’d love to know.
Comments
2 Comments so far
I’ve worked in the both traditional closed-cubicle offices (DDB Chicago and FamilyLearn) and open-space, collaboration-friendly settings (VSA Partners and Interstate Batteries). In my experience the latter is far superior for maximum productivity and constant team communication. The downside is incessant interruptions. So if you go the collaborative route, it is essential to create semi-removed meeting rooms where employees can go to work with a teammate, a group or all by themselves. You have to have a sanctuary to occasionally escape the distractions.
Thanks for the insight. Diego, a partner at IDEO, says that he has a place to escape to get work done (has to). We’re definitely thinking to have private spaces as well.