Innovation Network: Articles & Reports,Changing Environments

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Changing Environments
By Lars Kolind

Worker flexibility is leading to changes in the traditional office environment. Companies such as Alcoa and Sun Microsystems are designing offices that will encourage conversations and the exchange of ideas between employees. At Sun's Menlo Park campus, only 35% of all interior space is for offices. By contrast, there are 225 meeting places, including "Sun" rooms where people can relax in chairs and couches, and "Forums," where ideas can be exchanged.

MCI is opening 200 Rally Centers for its sales and service staff; each center has a family-room type setting, modular furniture, and four types of shared office space. United Airlines has set up reservation offices in some suburbs to help reduce commuting times; and IBM is equipping each of its sales representatives with a laptop ThinkPad, two phone lines at home, a fax, remote printer, pager and cellular phone.

(Originally reported in Industry Week, April 15, 1996, and reprinted by Creativity Fringes, the U.S. Forest Service's internal creativity newsletter.)

Oticon, a hearing aid manufacturer in Denmark has radically transformed its environment. Project teams have replaced hierarchies and offices have been eliminated in favor of mobil, modular work stations that are rearranged into project pods as needed. This leads to high level of flexibility and cross-fertilization as people move from one project team to another.

Lars Kolind, CEO of Oticon will describe the environment of the future when he appears as a keynote speaker at Convergence 97.

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