Creating designated spaces that unleash innovation

Designing a physical space for teams to innovate in can be just as important as having the right people, tools, processes, and technology.

Stanford’s d school

Our office workplaces have a bias towards efficiency, not creativity. They’re designed for working fast and efficiently, dealing to administrative tasks, and working more individually than in groups. They’re output focused, open plan, and interrupted. Even our meeting rooms are focused more on this type of work – efficiently sharing information and making decisions.

All pretty good for business as usual and the implementation stages of projects, but not so good for the early stages of innovation.

Innovation requires spaces that encourage and enable big picture thinking, creativity, collaboration, a bias towards action, and design doing. This is because innovation is a much more creative, visual, collaborative and ‘solve by doing’ approach than most business-as-usual projects. You’re standing, creating, writing with markers on sticky notes, and working in multidisciplinary teams. Some might call it messy due to the number of sticky notes, butcher paper, whiteboards, prototypes and so on in use and on display.

Innovation can be as much about the physical space and artefacts you use as the methods and tools.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Author of Creativity – Flow and The Psychology of Discovery and Invention wrote:

“It is easier to enhance creativity by changing conditions in the environment than by trying to make people think more creatively.”

So, what does this space actually look like? A designated, extra-large room with loads of wall space, and a few essential furniture items can actually go a long way to inspiring the right environment and being a lever for effecting an increase in innovative behaviours and mindset. Let’s dive into it in a bit more detail.

Wall Space

You’ll need plenty of wall space and whiteboards for completing your innovation activities. Just about every stage of the innovation journey, especially the early stages, uses templates and canvases that are populated with insights and ideas on sticky notes. One of the best ways to do this, both individually and as a group, is on blank walls and whiteboards.

Working on large whiteboards encourages sharing and promotes collaboration, whilst also allowing for expansive and iterative thinking and enables everyone to see the big picture.

It also gets everyone up and, on their feet, which means they’ll have more energy (at least until they fade). There’ll be other times for sitting down.

I find having a mix of walls and whiteboards works really well, as you can use the whiteboards as movable usable walls between each team zone. This also helps create some acoustic, but not visual, separation between team zones.

Pro tip: You’ll want space for up to four breakout teams during key workshops.

KPMG’s Sydney Innovation Lab

Plenary Space

You’ll also need a central space for the whole team to get together and instruct tasks to others in workshops and so on. This is where seating is suitable. You can go with just chairs, add tables, or make it more relaxed, with couches and beanbags. Just remember, design it for how you want to use the space.

Pro tip: As a minimum I’d have 4 tables for 4 teams of 6 people, with extra tables for workshop materials and catering.

Flexibility

It is also great to put everything on wheels. When Stanford’s d.school redesigned their innovation space they took inspiration from the stage in performing arts. Everything was made movable — walls, whiteboards, even the couches are on wheels. It makes you want to dive straight in and do stuff. No obstacle is a barrier.

Stanfod’s d school

Not too polished

You want the workspace to signal that experimentation and failure is okay. It’s a place where any idea goes, and free thinking is the norm. A nice to have is a designated space for making simple, quick and low-cost mock-ups (prototypes) of products, services, processes and systems.

Some of the innovation spaces I’ve visited in different organisations are often more ‘showroom’ than ‘workshop’. You want your innovation space to be a workshop where everyone can muck in and get creative.

Permanency

You’ll also need your thinking and artefacts to stay up. You are going to be evolving and iterating these. Having to take them down at the end of every day, store them, and then find a new room the next day and repeat it over and over again will just result in lost ideas and wasted time and energy. Time that should be going into understanding your customers, generating ideas, building prototypes, and innovating!

Having insights and ideas up permanently on a wall (until project completion) also makes it easier for stakeholder walk-throughs and showcases. So, get permission for a dedicated space.

In conclusion, designing a physical space for teams to innovate in can be just as important as having the right people, tools, processes, and technology. Set your teams up for success by creating dedicated spaces to unlock creativity and innovation!

Happy innovating,

Nathan

P.S. Thank you for reading, and if you enjoyed it, please like, reshare, and add your thoughts and questions into the comments.

I am the founder of customer-driven innovation and growth firm Methodry and author of Innovator’s Playbook, published by Wiley. I help teams build their innovation mastery and work alongside them to innovate on their most important challenges.