Smart designers create research spaces that allow for serendipity and cross disciplinary contact. In a similar way, taking a page from the tech sector, we¡¯ve seen open meeting and gathering space emerge as the new essentials for firms who want to encourage creativity, collaboration, and flexibility. The Bell Labs lesson was about more than the environments suited to technological innovation. It speaks to how almost every business does work today. Where companies once developed physical products to be sold in storefronts, they¡¯re now planning and developing for the user experience of online commerce. Today, bringing a product to market is a data-driven enterprise. It requires teams working across multiple platforms and touchpoints; it also means communicating with clients through a variety of media. The creative environments needed to meet the demands of this kind of work require a new space in the workplace: innovation centers.

What are innovation centers?

Simply put, innovation centers bring people from different departments and disciplines together based on the project on which they are working. It is a fluid effort to shake up the organization through office space design. It is meant to be flexible and adaptable, with tools and equipment that teams can reconfigure to meet new project needs.

It¡¯s a shared workspace that¡¯s also meant to be budget friendly. The innovation center fosters creativity without the hefty renovation costs each time it turns over for a new project.

Pre-pandemic: The dawn of innovation centers

As in the Bell example, research shows that innovative ideas tend to flourish outside the normal work encounters. Running into a colleague in the halls or heating up lunch in the communal kitchen are opportunities to build stronger bonds or exchange ideas. Companies saw this and started to create areas for collaboration to continue after meetings. Maybe it¡¯s a sitting nook outside of a meeting room or the whiteboard paint on walls outside of conference rooms to harness energy from a spontaneous exchange.

But these approaches were limited by the silo structure most companies are organized around: departments sit together believing there is more to be gained from those who do similar work. Firms want to do everything they can to set the stage for innovation, testing ideas, creating new products, and finding efficiencies. They desire workspaces that do more than suggest the possibility of chance encounters.

Before the pandemic, some adventurous clients were trying to excite their staff to think differently about how they work. They were moving away from departments toward team-based organization. They hoped to spark more cooperation by putting groups that had not been next to each other in proximity. The idea was to break down the silos and create new relationships.

An answer to the new normal

Innovation centers answer some of the questions posed by the new normal regarding office work. Clients, especially those that have embraced the work-from-home hybrid as the norm, tell us they are looking for ways to encourage office use. If staff members can come into the office¡ªregardless of the frequency and duration of their visit¡ªwhy do they come in? Where do they go?

The answer from an innovation point of view is that they come into the office to work with a team on a specific project, usually for a set time. Add this to the idea of fostering innovation by breaking up the conventional departments and it is no wonder that encouraging workers to come back to the office has given firms the opportunity to embrace the innovation center.

Office space design: Scalable space for teams

A current client is asking us for advice on innovation centers because they¡¯re setting up new team-based groupings around projects. Teams of 20 are focused on implementing new offerings. This new endeavor is typical of what companies do today. They pull from various disciplines¡ªmarketing, IT, web design, user experience, accounting¡ªto make everything work smoothly behind a digital fa?ade or storefront.

So instead of a physical layout requiring these professionals to walk long corridors¡ªor sometimes drive to other buildings¡ªto collaborate with those in other, sometimes unfamiliar, departments, the innovation center brings the team together in a ¡°bullpen¡± or team room. Innovation centers often require us to create team rooms at multiple scales because teams can vary in size. They may need team rooms for 6, 20, or 40 people. These should all be on the same floor if possible.

The benefits of workplace innovation centers

Like Bell Labs, today¡¯s innovation centers are intended to pay off in various ways. Collaboration space has become a primary feature in the workplace, but for many, it can still mean walking across campus to meet up. Innovation centers come with adjacent collaboration spaces. By design, it¡¯s easy for team members to meet.

The frequency of those serendipitous contacts and chance conversations is increased. And team members are tuned in to each other¡ªoverhearing conversations related to the project or even unrelated topics¡ªand able to offer solutions and skills. Ideally, this speeds up the problem-solving process and results in a better product. A further benefit is that the team-based approach creates a group that can more easily interface with other internal groups and with third parties, collaborators, and clients. Whether it¡¯s students at a university seeking services, or a client that is having a product developed, they needn¡¯t bounce around between different department hubs and floors to uncover solutions. The innovation center becomes a one-stop location.

Shared workspaces and collaboration

The desire to put people together on teams, even temporarily, is new. But the traditional assigned desks hinder the plan. People personalize them and relocation becomes onerous.

The hot desk is a key ingredient for innovation centers. Because staff members don¡¯t have an assigned desk it¡¯s much easier for a firm to assign them to a team bullpen for a specified period.

A blank slate for a conceptual makerspace

Innovation centers are akin to makerspaces. In a makerspace, the idea is to put a lot of people together in a space where they have the raw material and tools to make things as they take cues and get ideas from others in the space.

In an innovation center, it¡¯s not about a physical product. Innovation ¡°makers¡± might be delivering new processes, approaches, concepts, solutions, or digital campaigns. The tools, technology, number and size of screens, and seating available at the innovation center is relative to the industry or the team¡¯s project at hand.

An innovative office reduces internal silos

The checks and balances in a departmental can limit possibilities and create rivalries. It¡¯s easy to misinterpret this statement: ¡°You can¡¯t do that. We don¡¯t have the budget for it.¡± Ideally, the innovation center lets camaraderie and social connection flourish¡ªand gets rid of the ¡°can¡¯t¡± words. It builds trust and a willingness to find solutions that satisfy collaborators.

Fosters team ownership of ideas

In theory, innovation centers let good ideas travel further. It¡¯s not one department presenting ideas to others, that may tear it apart. With innovation centers, workers from multiple departments to take an idea borne of casual conversations, develop it, and present it as an alliance¡ªone that has already been tested from multiple points of view.

Which industries are embracing this?

The innovation center has gone from a start-up staple to a tech giant standard. Now, it¡¯s going mainstream as the way to organize teams to develop products for a multiplatform world.

We¡¯re seeing the technology, life sciences, retail, higher education¡ªeven financial services industries¡ªembrace the innovation center. They¡¯ve already discovered that offering new products and services on the web is a complex, multidisciplinary undertaking. It involves the integration of user experience design and engineering, marketing vision, business, and accounting perspective.

In today¡¯s office, innovation isn¡¯t just for the tech industry.