[music] Now I want to talk about the environment, sort of the, the environment in which the group meets

or the environment within which you work, because I think that has a great deal of affect on us that we may not realize how it affects innovation seeking behaviors in a group. And so sometimes we maybe, feel like we're sort of in this, in this cubicle and it's not inspiring, it feels claustrophobic, it sort of makes us feel inside. So how is that we can push past that? How is that we can sort of push outside and get to a different place? What kind of constraints you might think about is sort of you think of this as a tension between sort of the comfort that we have and then also the collaboration that we, We need. Because again we're talking about groups, remember? So we were thinking about what is the context within which groups operate and how is it that, that's kind of that context affects what happens inside, the behaviors inside. One thing that happens is groups tend to, no they don't tend to, groups can work in spaces that impede interaction. And if being in a group is about exchanging information, then anything that gets in the way of that, that impedes that, that's problematic. Groups may meet in places and work in places where there's limited media or limited access, that is that they can't show each other what they're doing, they can't talk to each other about what they're doing. And another problem I've seen a great deal is when groups work in places Where they can't share what they're learning and where they can't document their insight. So let me tell you a little bit more about these in, in detail. And so here's a picture of a maybe you know, a traditional office space, you have all these cubicles. It's really hard for people to think about collaborating with each other. In fact, for these particular ones I've observed, this is a picture I took, I've observed that the idea is the, the furniture sort of makes you want to sit by yourself and, and do your typing. What I have observed is when I walked past there, people would always be leaning back and talking to each other up and down the aisle that way, which was interesting to

me. That they were actually subverting what this furniture tried to make them do, which was to not interact, not, social interaction with each other. It's also un-stimulating, there's nothing there to make you think different thoughts. There's nothing there to make you feel good or feel any kind of emotion. Any kind of the stuff, maybe with perception, we wanted perceptions. And so there's nothing in that space, a space like this that let's you do that. How do we overcome environment constraints? Like what are the things that we can do. Well, 1 thing is, we can sort of get past these spaces that impede interaction. We can reconfigure your working space, right? So if you have a space that is not conducive, like, reconfigure it. I like to do, my own personal, mode is to just, to buy cheap and buy often. Just, like, try different furniture. I go to a place, a very inexpensive place. Maybe like an IKEA or a Target, or, you know, whatever the equivalent is for you, the junkyard, even, and, and get things and try it out, sort of see. If, if I get these kind of chairs, could people sit closer to each other or, or if I put this kind of table, does it, does it sort of create sort of distance between people? Can I use furniture that has different shapes and that, does that allow me to talk to people differently? Sometimes, in, in, there, there's this way we used to think about innovation or, or innovative companies are the ones with beanbag chairs and oxygen bar, and things like that. Well, in fact, there is something about being able to move your body. Being able to sort of feel different. Being able to, have colors. Being able to have, good smells. Being able to be in control of your environment. That actually can inspire you. That can actually make you feel better. Collaboration here. Instead of having those sort of cubicles where people sit, like put them in a table and they can actually interact, that they can they can bring food in and they can bring drink they can bring their computers in and work together in a, in a,

collaborative way and this is actually some students from my class. Also the media, like how do we communicate to each other while we're in the space, so how do we facilitate those. There's a project I worked on with some, actually some rocket scientists, and you can see all the different kinds of things going on, all the different media modes. So there's an overhead projector; there's some, Easel pads if you look carefully in the corner, you'll see the camera if there's a camera recording this stuff. There's toys on the table, the tables are not shaped in a square way to create the sort of oppositional behavior and so here's a space that was very carefully thought out to help interaction and documentation at the same time because all these things here are easy to document. And documentation nowadays, y'know, you can buy a small, cheap video camera. They're very inexpensive. In fact, you have one in your phone. Most people have a video camera or a photo camera in their phone, and so why not take pictures of things and why not document things. Ideally, you'd be able to leave the stuff up, though, so that when you come back to the room the stuff is there. Because the set-up costs in the organization may be very difficult to not be able to get back into the space and remember what it is you were thinking as a team. So again, reconfiguring work space, being able to bring in some different kinds of furniture to experiment with, the kinds of Media that you use, do we use projection, do we use showing each other things, we use building things as ways of communicating and then also the documentation. Cheap technology, using really cheap technology for recording and for, for, memorializing things and also allocating rooms to project teams. I was in one organization where I remember we, they have all their conference rooms on the first floor where the project teams would meet. And so the, this makes sense from an architectural perspective. Like, they have this shared resource downstairs, and people would go down there, and you'd be ready to go. And there'd be someone in the room, and so you knock on the room, hey, we're ready to go, you know, hurry up, we're ready.

And then they would be ten minutes late getting out. They felt bad, because, and they were bringing all their stuff. And they're collecting all their stuff, and they're coming out. We're coming in with all of our stuff. We get all our stuff up. And we get started, and it already is twenty minutes after the time we were supposed to start. And then we add all of our stuff up. And then after another fifteen minutes, the next team's on there. Hey, we need to use the space. We need to use the space. Then we have to take everything down. When really, the setup costs are terrible in that. We really don't get very much done. Because we're putting everything up and we're putting everything back down; we're putting everything up and we're putting everything back down. What most groups do to avoid that problem is to not put anything up. So then we have all the information in a computer somewhere or in someone's notebook, where we can't share it, where we can't collaborate around it, where we can't understand it. And so these are the kind of impacts of space. And so we really want to think about the environment where innovation happens and how do I make it conducive to the information processing problem I have and also how do I make it motivating for people to operate within that space.