IDRC’ s blue-ribbon powwow in Nashville spotlighted a host of workplace innovations that add competitive edge. Above all, though, space must fit strategy.
“The evolution of the built environment over the next 50 years will shape the future of our society, creating new patterns of geographical distribution and human activity.”
— Landscape of Change
At the corner of space and strategy: That’s now corporate real estate’s quintessential address.
And that’s one complicated corner to manage. The intersection of space and strategy not only further crisscrosses into people and technology, it also keeps moving — not only in physical space, but into cyberspace as well.
“It’s like that story from Winnie the Pooh,” explained Management 21 President Ron Galbraith. “Pooh Bear was sitting in the woods, building something. He seemed happy, but then Rabbit came along and said, ‘What are you building?’
“Pooh replied, ‘I don’t know anymore. Something happened along the way.’ And that’s how critical work changes have affected corporate space,” Galbraith said.
Indeed, more and more work is unfolding not in facilities, but practically in the ether: Far-flung virtual teams collaborate electronically; networked employees labor in customers’ quarters, telework centers, homes, hotels, and even airports and cabs.
Moreover, those whiplash workplace changes will only accelerate, asserted business strategist Gary Wendt. “Technological change is accelerating so rapidly, it’s having a dramatic effect on everything we do,” said the onetime head of GE Capital Services. “Information will be coming at us in bucketfuls, far faster than we can absorb it.” And to think: A weekday copy of The New York Times already contains more information than one person learned in a lifetime 70 years ago.
So, does real estate even matter anymore at that fast-diffusing corner of space and strategy?
Yes, albeit in new and different ways. That was a central theme emerging from the Tennessee World Congress of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate association.
“People who say that the office is dead work in an industry that is defined by place: Silicon Valley,” Steelcase Vice President of Corporate Strategy and R&D Jim Keane explained at IDRC’s high-level powwow late last year in Nashville. “They don’t trust the Internet. They must have physical connection. They’re scared to death that if they don’t live there, they’ll miss some important connection.
“That means space still matters,” Keane asserted. “It’s one of the most powerful forces for change.”
The ongoing dance between virtual clicks and physical bricks was also limned by Harvard University School of Design lecturer and author Martha O’Mara:
“Many of our assumptions about how we organize work and where it takes place are changing,” she explained. “We are no longer tied to a specific place. We can choose how often, where and in what ways we come together. Whole new ways of doing business are evolving, with both confusion, and unprecedented opportunity, at hand.
“Place matters today more than ever, so corporate real estate matters more than ever,” O’Mara concluded.