Working From My Bean Bag Chair Treadmill Desk
New Work Order: From Google and Pixar to Innocent… The Future of the Office Starts Here
The Independent
That’s what everyone’s favorite late CEO did when he designed Pixar’s offices in 1986. Instead of putting the bathrooms (and café and mailboxes and gift shop) off to the side, Steve Jobs placed them in an atrium at the center of the workspace. And “although some were more than a little annoyed to have to traipse to the lobby every time they needed the loo — something remarkable started to happen,” writes The Independent’s Archie Bland. “Pixar’s employees started to bump into each other. They shot the breeze. Sometimes, the chatter would yield something useful, and one of the participants would head back to her desk with a new idea.” And now everyone wants to be like Apple. Bland ventures into the West London headquarters of juice and smoothie maker Innocent to witness “a benevolent, juice-obsessed cult, teetering on the border between charming and insufferable; that is, like an Innocent smoothie bottle with desks in it.” While perhaps an extreme example, this type of setup is prized by the likes of Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, who says that people are “more collaborative and innovative when they’re together. Some of the best ideas come from putting two different ideas together.” And recent research found that people are happier when they have different options for where and how to work. But does that actually lead to productivity — and, perhaps most important, to profit? Maybe not. Dish Network is often cited as one of the most hostile workplaces in America and still boasts outstanding numbers. So goes this winding article, with no real answers but with lots of important questions that will shape how we work in the future.