Innovation in work settings

So a whole lot of companies recently have been talking and thinking about work settings to cultivate good work and innovation. (I think I posted about this before but I can not find it so oh well) The thing that is interesting is that what many of these companies are doing, i.e. google, is creating more flexible environments and more ad-hoc relationships so that people cross-pollinate a lot. There are various other objectives as well, including user convenience and the ability to enter and stay in a state of flow. In any case, when I was recently looking at this kind of innovation I thought a few things. One main one being that it would be a good project to actually go and do some research in how people work well because I totally think the "nice" offices of the world are doing little more than scrambling it together. A lot more recently I was thinking about it again and I thought what a good office from my perspective would be.

For me a good office is a clean desktop on a nice little and adaptable laptop. I do not use paper (though I think it would make my work better if I did more often) and I do not use a mouse (people who actually know how to use trackpads know they are faster than mice) and I tend not to use a table even when it is available. I am happy with my laptop in my lap. Additionally I need my office with me all the time, because I work everywhere and all over the world, and I need my office to be able to fit in and interact with anyone else's office. In addition to a laptop my office includes a few things like cameras, a global socket power board, so I can plug in a lot of anythings, and a global plug adapter, so I can plug my power board in anywhere. I also tend to have at least one mobile phone and about 20 SIM cards for various different countries. For networking I carry a Airport Express because even in a hotel room wireless is really convenient, especially when working with a few other people and creating ad hoc networks. I also carry a large hard drive but ideally I would have a smaller one of similar capacity, 500 Gb or 1 Tb. Headphones are also really important, though at this point I should invest in an ace bluetooth earpiece, the B&O one seems nice or perhaps the new Jawbone. For the time being I am not sure what the ideal office would be like in terms of a cubicle. I mean, I presume I should have a briefcase however so far I like a simple bag that I can take anywhere. Perhaps I would also take a pen but I think that is it.

So, if a ad-hoc work space can be this ad-hoc, can it also be more motivating of innovation and flow producing?

I think that a few steps could be taken. Firstly, better flow creating software needs to exist and more users need to be in a position to take advantage of the more advanced flow related features of tools they use (Designers fault not users fault). For the cultivation of innovation I think it comes down to some other issues. One key one, and something that really gets in my way some times, is a way to take notes and make them easy to find and readable. Evernote is ok in theory but a bit much effort for my needs some times. Another thing is being able to interoperate as much as possible and being able to operate as effectively as possible outside ones' own office. The obvious thing here is to use web-tools but sadly I have found that sometimes the web sucks in some places, and some websites do not work everywhere. So this is an issue that I have yet to find a good enough solution for. I think the only thing that computers and computer systems still do rather poorly is integrate functions, especially communication with other tools. i.e. modelling and talking to someone on the other side of the world about my model at the same time is really lame, even with the various tools that people have been working on.

So at some point I am going to try to find a better way to ensure this kind of mobile office is really mobile but also good and innovative and flowing and then I am going to try to link it back to the way real offices work to see if they can be made better...which I am pretty sure they can. More on that later.

Ok. So that was almost ranty I think, and I think I did not really come up with a good closing solution yet. Does anyone have any suggestions. I would really benefit from them :-)

Another project that I have been playing with a little bit is trying to work out what people actually need to travel with. Every time I travel I find I have something I do not need. So I want to put together a document that helps people work out what they need and which products are good solutions for those needs. If anyone is interested I would love some help because I suck at packing light.