provisioning for proximity
8 January, 2008 at 5:47 pm 4 comments
Sat at my desk trying to tune out the multiple conversations and ringtones going on around me in our very open plan but very jam packed office, I was reassured to read in the New York Times that google have done some research into how information flows inside creative businesses (using themselves as guinea pigs) which supported the good old fashioned idea of the importance of geographical proximity in explaining information flows inside creative businesses. In other words, people talk.
As the NYT put it, ‘The finding that information moved fastest among people who were the closest together is also an endorsement of the company’s “third rule for managing knowledge workers: Pack Them In”.’
You can read the full report here and google’s ten rules for managing creative workers here.
Entry filed under: agencies, trends, Work. Tags: google, information flows.
1. Eamon | 18 January, 2008 at 2:59 pm
When i worked for a large organization it always bothered me that we had to sit so far from one another. The idea was that we were meant to work instead of chatw. We were also meant to be working together in order to offer complicated technical solutions to customers. They wanted it both ways.
2. Open plan vs. open to distractions « (almost) always thinking | 15 January, 2009 at 6:45 pm
[...] In fact, google research revealed that (doh!) information flowed fastest in an office environment among people who were closely packed together. [...]
3. Packing ‘em in – today’s open plan means shrinking space « (almost) always thinking | 7 December, 2009 at 6:38 pm
[...] to try and fit more people into less space – and if you subscribe to google’s philosophy that information flows fastest amongst knowledge workers when you pack them in, the news that the average height of desk partitions has shrunk from 5ft to less than 4ft in the [...]
4. comparing and contrasting agency shop floors « (almost) always thinking | 28 July, 2010 at 2:56 pm
[...] spacious, light, bright and even inspiring Creative Spaces. Other agencies had clearly embraced google’s third rule of managing knowledge workers and packed them in, making an oppressive and claustrophobic environment and some agencies were so new they had yet to [...]