Molly Keenan
We all know, intuitively, that collaboration is critical to how successful companies come up with new ideas and thrive over the long term.
Gensler’s 2016 U.S. Workplace Survey surveyed over 4,000 U.S. office workers about how the workplace can drive organizational innovation. The results reaffirmed the relationship between collaboration and levels of innovation. But as companies think about how to actualize this, they must grapple with the fact that collaboration can take many forms. When designing a workspace, we need to define what we mean by collaboration and ultimately what types of interaction the design is supporting.
One company that is pushing the boundaries on what collaboration can – and should – mean for their organization is GE. GE is using its headquarters relocation to Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood to further its evolution into a digital industrial company. How? By rethinking not only how collaboration happens, but also redefining who participates in the collaborative process.
GE’s new headquarters will be home to not only corporate functions, but also innovative and growing businesses in technology, health care and life sciences. Increasing opportunities for internal collaboration between these groups to share best practices and further new thinking is an important part of GE’s corporate strategy to drive the integration of digital technology across its businesses and customers.
To promote interactions, the workplace design utilizes a number of approaches. The largely open-plan workspace emphasizes flexibility by providing options to reconfigure layout based on team or project needs. Individuals also have the ability to reorient their workstations to more easily collaborate with colleagues. And throughout the headquarters campus, a diverse range of collaborative, social and even outdoor spaces will function as destinations and provide opportunities for impromptu conversations away from the desk.
GE’s organizational scale also means that employees are always operating within a global context, and virtual collaboration is critical to almost every job role. The new headquarters will provide a range of communication options for employees, from dedicated telepresence rooms to individual virtual collaboration tools. The goal is to provide a seamless employee experience where connectivity to remote colleagues and collaborators is unconstrained by the physical space.
And while internal and virtual collaboration are vital to how the new headquarters will operate, where GE is pushing boundaries is in embracing a collaborative process that engages with the external community. GE’s industrial operating system, Predix, is an open source software platform that uses a model of open collaboration with customers and partners. This concept of co-creation extends to how GE plans to use its headquarters to drive new types of collaborative processes.
Innovative Spaces, Collaborative Results
The GE headquarters will offer a variety of spaces where people from GE can come together to interact with the broader community. A coworking space at the ground floor lobby will be open for employees, customers and the public to use during the day, and will reinforce this spirit of entrepreneurial activity right at GE’s front door. Makerspaces – the types of workshop settings with tools and equipment to allow for creation and invention – will offer internal and external groups the opportunity to explore the development of new products and ideas. Incubator space for startup companies will bring fresh ideas into the midst of the GE workspace.
The ground and top floors of the headquarters will offer a mix of indoor and outdoor large-scale spaces to host a variety of conferences and events. This allows GE to offer forums for actively engaging with academic, nonprofit and startup communities, both locally and globally. As a community convener, GE will create a rich and evolving environment of new ideas that can continue to push boundaries in its own thinking.
Collaboration is clearly central to how businesses operate today: in the same U.S. Workplace Survey, the findings showed that the higher-scoring innovative organizations tend to have employees who spend less time at their desks. And yet it is not enough to be collaborating; to be successful, companies must develop a point of view around who their employees should be collaborating with that aligns with their organizational strategy.
In its new Boston headquarters, GE has recognized not only the importance of interaction but also that it is vital for collaboration to extend beyond its own walls. Innovation can come from many sources, and engaging with the greater community is a way to broaden GE’s perspective and actively leverage the knowledge and resources of the global community.
A strategist with Gensler, Molly Keenan, AIA, advises businesses on the power of design to improve organizational performance.
