High Tech Drives Workspace Transformation
January 28, 2020
Open offices help businesses sharpen creative edge
The Channelnomics Staff
Technology continues to reshape the way we work, with BYOD, virtualization, and the cloud untethering us from desks, cubicles, and data centers. Just as those technology sets have spurred us to tweak processes, revise workflows, and rethink our definition of teamwork, they’ve also compelled us to re-imagine our physical workspaces.
At Steelcase, an office-furniture manufacturer, executives liken today’s teamwork to soccer, with players continuously interacting and taking cues from one another. By contrast, the “old” teamwork style was akin to a swim team competing in individual events.
In recent years, Steelcase has been at the forefront of research into workspace design and collaboration. In its 2019 Active Collaboration Study, the company found that 54% of time at work is spent working with others; 90% of respondents said collaboration is key to innovation, allowing for the creation of new, better ideas.
Under the new teamwork paradigm, walled-in, compartmentalized spaces are giving way to open, flexible ones. And that’s not the case just for design firms, tech start-ups, millennial freelancers, and cutting-edge media outlets. Driven by a need to collaborate more effectively and cut real estate costs, businesses of every ilk have begun taking down walls and ditching fixed furniture.
Some examples include Cisco, Deloitte, and LEGO.
As of December 2018, 90% of Cisco’s global real estate portfolio had been converted to a new workplace design that aligns with the Cisco Connected Workspace, launched in 2011. The user-centric workspaces include small, medium, and large conference rooms; huddle spaces; creativity zones for socialization and group gatherings; and informal, laptop-centric touchdown spaces.
At The Edge, a sustainable, open-concept office building that serves as the headquarters for Deloitte Netherlands in Amsterdam, private offices and assigned seats have been nixed in favor of “hot-desking.” And at LEGO’s London offices, employees enjoy flexible work zones with open booths, private meeting rooms, huddle spaces, and generous amounts of wall space on which to write.
Capitalizing on the open-space concept, Steelcase sells seating, desks and tables, storage systems, technology solutions, and accessories to companies aiming to custom-tailor their workspaces and optimize collaboration for today’s employees.
Although not a new company – it was established more than 100 years ago – Steelcase broke into the high-tech market a couple of years ago, when it teamed up with Microsoft to introduce tech-enabled workspaces that integrate its own architecture and furniture with the software player’s Surface devices. In 2019, Steelcase inked deals with brand-name IT distributors to sell its Roam solution, a system of mobile stands and wall mounts, and Microsoft’s Surface Hub 2S, a computing device, digital whiteboard, and meeting platform wrapped in one.
The collaboration market is on an upward climb, with Synergy Research Group predicting it will hit $45 billion by year’s end. That spells opportunity for everyone in the space, including companies of every size and stripe that can leverage flexible, open workspaces to drive innovation and spark genius.
Stay tuned for our three-part series on vertical market workspace trends.
At Steelcase, an office-furniture manufacturer, executives liken today’s teamwork to soccer, with players continuously interacting and taking cues from one another. By contrast, the “old” teamwork style was akin to a swim team competing in individual events.
In recent years, Steelcase has been at the forefront of research into workspace design and collaboration. In its 2019 Active Collaboration Study, the company found that 54% of time at work is spent working with others; 90% of respondents said collaboration is key to innovation, allowing for the creation of new, better ideas.
Under the new teamwork paradigm, walled-in, compartmentalized spaces are giving way to open, flexible ones. And that’s not the case just for design firms, tech start-ups, millennial freelancers, and cutting-edge media outlets. Driven by a need to collaborate more effectively and cut real estate costs, businesses of every ilk have begun taking down walls and ditching fixed furniture.
Some examples include Cisco, Deloitte, and LEGO.
As of December 2018, 90% of Cisco’s global real estate portfolio had been converted to a new workplace design that aligns with the Cisco Connected Workspace, launched in 2011. The user-centric workspaces include small, medium, and large conference rooms; huddle spaces; creativity zones for socialization and group gatherings; and informal, laptop-centric touchdown spaces.
At The Edge, a sustainable, open-concept office building that serves as the headquarters for Deloitte Netherlands in Amsterdam, private offices and assigned seats have been nixed in favor of “hot-desking.” And at LEGO’s London offices, employees enjoy flexible work zones with open booths, private meeting rooms, huddle spaces, and generous amounts of wall space on which to write.
Capitalizing on the open-space concept, Steelcase sells seating, desks and tables, storage systems, technology solutions, and accessories to companies aiming to custom-tailor their workspaces and optimize collaboration for today’s employees.
Although not a new company – it was established more than 100 years ago – Steelcase broke into the high-tech market a couple of years ago, when it teamed up with Microsoft to introduce tech-enabled workspaces that integrate its own architecture and furniture with the software player’s Surface devices. In 2019, Steelcase inked deals with brand-name IT distributors to sell its Roam solution, a system of mobile stands and wall mounts, and Microsoft’s Surface Hub 2S, a computing device, digital whiteboard, and meeting platform wrapped in one.
The collaboration market is on an upward climb, with Synergy Research Group predicting it will hit $45 billion by year’s end. That spells opportunity for everyone in the space, including companies of every size and stripe that can leverage flexible, open workspaces to drive innovation and spark genius.
Stay tuned for our three-part series on vertical market workspace trends.
