[MUSIC] From the previous videos, you now know how to communicate about design innovation to your stakeholders and the abc's of building a team. We're going to focus on making sure that your physical space supports design innovation within your organization. When space, communication, and teamwork are integrated, they create a multidimensional, immersive environment that supports reliable and rapid innovation. Also, space, like products and services, can be designed using the design innovation process we have taught you. So where do you start? Following what we've learned so far. First, you want to understand the needs and desires of the people who are following the design innovation process within your organization. Both group work and individual work is required. So you want to observe and interview individual's needs for quiet contemplation and undisturbed experimentation. And similarly, you want to observe your group space need for sharing knowledge, brainstorming, and prototyping, and getting feedback on works in progress. A big mistake that I've seen companies make, is that they tear down all of the walls to support collaboration. While eliminating walls helped people to see each other, noise presented a serious problem. A large global company in Silicon Valley striving to adopt design and innovation observed the employees tended to work half of the time as individuals and half of the time as groups. So they redesigned the space to reflect their work practices. They built multiple breakout rooms and windows for collaborative work and a space for quickly building prototypes and hang out space for the team members to casually interact. Once you understand how your organization will work, begin to prototype and iterate new space in rapid cycles. Your goal in this process is to learn how your space supports or doesn't support your design innovation process. You will learn most by building low fidelity mockups and putting them in the space to see how people use them, rather than investing a lot of time and money into expensive furniture only to find out that no one uses it. When working in a small West Coast startup, we were trying to figure out how best to configure the space for creative collaboration. We built temporary walls out of plywood for each team to use. In our office supply cabinet, we not only have the usual supplies of pen, paper, and markers, but also building supplies such as drills, hammers, and nails. One day, during a group brainstorm, a team felt constrained by the temporary dividing wall. Their solution? Take the wall down. Within five minutes, they had literally removed a wall to make more space for the team to brainstorm. Through this experiment, we learn that walls must be movable to support different configurations of collaboration. Phil Gilbert, who was tasked with bringing design innovation to IBM, took a similar approach, allowing the space to be configured differently each week, depending on the particular needs of any one team. So the final question is, where should the space be? Proximity of the space should be based on the location of the design innovation practice within the organization. In some organizations, design innovation is a process everyone is expected to follow. In this case, the entire space is design in this manner because the entire space needs to support the cross-pollination of ideas. However, in other organizations, design innovation is distinct from the primary work of the organization. Take Mayo Clinic as an example. Mayo Clinic is a world-class hospital that runs an innovation practice within. They've found that the innovation happens best when offsite from the day-to-day practice of the hospital. With their space, project teams share a central project area, posting information on the walls or other vertical surfaces for quick updates. As one goes deeper into the space, more information is revealed. Deep within individual team spaces, members can experiment with risky ideas, free from the scrutiny of outsiders. In the high speed work environments, too often we go for the quick fix. We replicate other's organization spaces without understanding how the space supports the culture and the process. I call this creative mimicry. Instead of replicating other designs that work well, you can use a design innovation process to design the space, or the stage if you will, to fit the culture, process, and technology. After this process, you may find a few small, inexpensive changes to you space can better support design innovation in your organization. In conclusion, space, culture, and process are interdependent. To design the best space for your organization, do not blindly follow other organizations. Rather, follow the design innovation process, deeply understanding your users, your employees, creating low fidelity prototypes and testing your concepts in context. You can have the perfect space, but if no one inhabits it, it can feel like an homage to what could have been. [MUSIC]
