Katherine Hallen: Better Collaboration Accelerates Innovation

Is it financial concerns, a desire to emulate the innovative campuses seen at major tech start-ups, or a mandate to create cultural change within the organization? Under pressure to deliver greater efficiency and inspire collaboration within the workplace, organizations are taking a close look at how best to optimize their real estate footprints for the results they seek.

“Better collaboration accelerates innovation.”

Every transformation project, whether it’s a digital transformation project or a workspace transformation project, is really all about cultural transformation. When organizations are undertaking digital transformation work, they are looking to understand the “right behaviors” around collaboration and modern work that align with their own organizational priorities. What’s the culture, what’s the environment that they’re striving to create, and how do those different pieces fit together?

In addition to the behaviors that organizations want to enable, they’re looking at how technology platforms and tools encourage those behaviors and new ways of working. That’s really where the focus on culture and the environment that companies want to create originates. And then as they focus deeply on that culture and enabling those behaviors, questions surrounding collaboration come to the fore. What do they mean about collaboration Why is collaboration important?

Better collaboration accelerates innovation. Accordingly, many companies are holistically looking at collaboration—from those behaviors to technology systems to digital workspaces to physical workspaces. Organizations increasingly realize that collaboration requires attention to both social and technological needs and how employees can work together in the best way. But getting that flywheel turning can be difficult.

This is an excerpt from 8 Experts on Workplace Transformation. The eBook was generously sponsored by Iron Mountain.