Future of the Office

Future of the office according to me

I attended an event last week that considered the future of the office. I thought some of the content was very well presented but it did seem to focus on obvious targets such as the influence of security, compliance, technology innovation, globalization and environmental policies that nobody could ignore but these issues have been charging towards business IT strategists like a train for a good few years, so it would take an amazingly out of touch CIO to find this 'news'.

Rather than be objectionable in the meeting I pulled out my PDA and started jotting down a few notes on my own interpretation.

When I discuss with business executives the change factors bubbling under the surface of commerce in the early part of the 21st century I would say it is the shortage of talent - and the resulting limited access to innovation and creativity - that leaders are becoming most concerned about. Most business professionals know that, whilst processes should be optimized wherever possible, competitive advantage in Western world companies revolves around the pockets of creativity found in groups of people. In my opinion, harnessing this talent is going to have a huge impact on IT innovation and ways of working in the office.

Another transformation is the way organizations structure their operations to harness change. We've heard very little about knowledge markets in recent years; probably because business consultants like me have done such a good job of turning knowledge working into an academic debate and collectively blurring people's appreciation of the genuine commercial justification for change that exists. In the real world, knowledge workers are no more productive than they were 20 years ago and I think many people have satisfied themselves that creating knowledge markets that work is not an achievable ambition. I suspect however, particularly with great examples like InnoCentive Inc. that evidence that knowledge markets can be made to work economically, we will see the subject of knowledge markets return.

The evolution of knowledge markets will mean that more and more individuals will be employed to solve business questions who do not work for the company needing the answers.
Neither can anyone ignore the impact of the enormous desire for lifestyle change on the way people use offices. This has been evidenced by the increasing numbers of home workers and the emergence of what are becoming known as the ‘Alter-preneurs’ – people who go into business not to be a Richard Branson to create successful business empires, but do it to serve their life-style preferences.

This means – I think - the office of the future is unlikely to be a physical workplace that everyone travels to. Twenty years from now I can imagine many people working in communal workspaces for different companies. I can image these offices to be modeled around the workplace of today; benched areas and breakout areas that blend quiet personal spaces with public debating areas and conferencing.

In this environment secure access to data will be a big issue; given that companies will want to know that only authorized people are accessing their data. I can imagine the virtual workspace will blend informal social networking and collaborative portal tools with more formal closed portal areas where individuals contribute to their knowledge markets and accountable people networks.

Operating within these more communal physical workspaces (perhaps in office centres found embedded within communities where people live) will demand more formal protocols supported by technology to:
• Manage projects
• Enable people to find experts and like minded workers - fuelling demand for social networking
• Know who is accessing data - introducing a whole raft of new data and network security challenges
• Measure the productivity and contributions of knowledge workers
• Appreciate how individuals contribute to processes
• Enable virtual working and collaboration

I think we will see some genuine innovation in areas such as search and data visualization to make it simpler for people to find and make sense of information. I can imagine common dictionaries of industry terms forming over time to make it easier for individuals to find and organize their information. I also envisage innovation in knowledge voting systems that help workers to find the 'right answers' they are looking for.

So in summary I believe that the worker behavior will be influenced by:
• Collaboration
• Mobility
• Knowledge markets
• Innovation in visualization technologies bringing easier ways to access knowledge and voting systems to aid problem solving

The office workspace will retain its physical nature but as a communal environment embedded into communities. To engineer this change technology will evolve to support virtual workspaces that are:
• Always online
• Collaborative
• Employ integrated telecoms, social networking, formalized networking and information management tools

The factors of change in user attitudes and behaviors, of technology and of the business drivers for innovation will undoubtedly cause people to ask the question – “Why do we need a physical office?” Wherever an office is located it will never be ideally located near to the dispersed knowledge workers of a global age. There will be fewer reasons to manage assets onsite with many resources such as IT being managed off-site or fully outsourced. With the advent of virtual meetings and richer digital media experiences there will be fewer reasons for customers and suppliers to visit a physical office. In a world scarce on resources and with the breakdown of communities and village/town centres there will be strong drivers to remove the commute and encourage people to work nearer to their homes; to play a more active role in their communities.

So I finally come to my conclusion which is that the future of the office is most likely to be a communal one and the times of the corporate headquarters building that we know and love is surely marked.