Promises and lures of open creative space for innovative teams

Like activity-based workspaces, innovative spaces are deemed to be efficient and flexible, but they are most often called upon to support collaborative and creative team work instead of individual whom sometime will work in a team. Our research objective is to further explore the links between the project team and its space to identify advantages as well as drawbacks and to determine if the company benefits from the adoption of open creative space with diverse collaborative areas. A case study of one world class company with several teams and diverse spaces is in progress. Our results suggest that communication and coordination are well served by open creative spaces without negative impact on employees autonomy but intimacy is jeopardized which, paired with background noise that never stop, can lead to stress at work. This research shows that several elements of open spaces are felt in the same way by a team or by department employees. But a team requires proximity that is essential to the exchange of information and coordination among the members while the lateral and hierarchical relationships are slightly redefined. Building managers needs to understand the percieved message that the individual receives from his organization through the design and allocation of spaces devoted to him and his team: freedom of action, empowerment to innovate or alienation to an environment that he does not control and which reduces him to a means of production until he leaves exhausted? The relationships between the feeling evoked by ambient conditions and their impacts on the individual, his tasks, his colleagues and his team is stronger than we could think. The temperature, the lighting as well as the variety of meeting rooms and their equipment’s form a complex whole of which we do not yet know all the impacts on the worker and the teams. Indeed, the diversity of spaces and their equipment fits perfectly into the teams' activities, resulting in a positive synergy in terms of coordination, communication and creativity. Creative spaces deserve their name when it comes to teamwork