Recent Research: Modeling the Impact of the Physical Environment on Innovation

Throughout this special issue of the Digest, we’ve explored how future trends in design may affect how TBED practitioners advance the field and how altering the organization of the physical components around us – from laboratory space to economic development organizations – may impact innovative performance. It seems an emerging field, one that is sought in the design community and one that may be welcomed by the customers of design services, is the practice of evaluating the spaces that are intended to produce innovation.

 

Earlier this year, a team of authors, with a wide variety of professional backgrounds from several European countries, proposed a model to evaluate these spaces in the journal, Creativity and Innovation Management. In “Innovation Spaces: Towards a Framework for Understanding the Role of the Physical Environment in Innovation,” the authors construct a transformation model with inputs and outputs, to separate the steps by which an initial strategic goal can be transformed to realized achievement. In this case, the process takes place within the context of an adaptable physical space.

 

The authors believe despite the growing emphasis placed on creating a designed workspace conducive to improving creativity and innovation, there is little empirical evidence on the benefits of this type of design. Instinct and personal judgment are driving designed elements within firm locations, not genuine insights gained from a critical or scientific evaluation. The knowledge gap they identify is the mismatch between how the environment impacts innovative performance and how this performance aligns with the strategic intentions of an organization.

 

Their model is an attempt to link these two components, which may shed light on how the individual pieces of designed spaces may support innovation and, more strategically, support the specific goals of an organization. Under this framework, the classification and comparison of differently design elements can be explored.

 

In the authors’ model, the first step is the acknowledgement of the “strategic intent” of an organization. In order to reach the second step of a designed physical space, a process of creation takes place. To get to the third step of “realized intent” where the outcome can be analyzed and possibly quantified, the process of use takes place. All of the components of their model can be described with different measurable variables, which they contend will allow evaluation between each step.

 

Within the context of this special issue, innovation has been used as a somewhat generic term, and as one further investigates the characteristics of innovation, it is necessary to further define and break down all of its components. Similarly, a step like the strategic intent needs to be further defined. In the model’s case, in order to understand where you are going, you may need to understand from where you are coming, and the strategic intent is the start point. The intent may include if an organization wants to reduce costs, enhance teamwork, enable customer input, or encourage better communication.

 

For example, if the organization’s goal is to improve team communication, then the physical space may need to include flexible workspaces and informal social gathering spaces. Alternatively, if the goal is to generate and retain novel ideas, then the design of the environment may emphasize physical and visual sources of inspiration or group dislocation to encourage deep thinking.

 

What can this research teach TBED practitioners?

 

Not all TBED organizations or businesses are alike. Some have different strategic goals, and a generic method to designing the physical environment around an organization might not help that group to reach its specific goals. Copying certain elements from the physical space at one location may not translate well from one organization or firm to another. While additional research in this field is needed, the authors have presented a framework that may allow spaces to be analyzed in a systematic manner and help to decide what design elements have the greatest performance impacts for individual organizations.

 

This article, written by James Moultrie, Mikael Nilsson, Marcel Dissel, Udo-Ernst Haner, Sebastiaan Janssen and Remko Van der Lugt, can be found in the March 2007 issue of Creativity and Innovation Management. For the time being, it can be downloaded for free at: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/caim/16/1