Office Space Advice
The Office of the Future, Part One
Published July 20th, 2009 by Jennifer LeClaire
If you ask 20 different people what the office of the future will look like, you’ll probably get 20 different answers. But we did it anyway. Although we don’t have the space to share the insights of everyone who offered their view on the office of the future – people have written books on the subject – we have collected some thoughts from some industry leaders on the topic.
Roger Kahn, owner of Intelligent Office of Garden City, New York, says:
Technology is going to make computers smaller, faster, and ever-easier to connect to the Internet. All of this speaks to increased mobility and increased mobility will result in less of a need for the traditional office.
It used to be that you had to go to a bricks-and-sticks office to “work.” This is where our files were. This is where our communications were. This is where we collaborated with our colleagues. Computers have made it such that we no longer have to go to an office to work. Our files are either on our local computers, or are easily accessible via the Internet. We are pretty mobile right now, but if you look at the new netbooks, and the new smartphones you can easily see how mobility is going to increase…and it will just keep going. All things computer will continue to get lighter, faster, and more powerful.
Virtual office and executive suite facilities are more compatible with the mobile “workstyle,” and the need for traditional offices will diminish. More and more companies will house themselves in virtual office and executive suite facilities because they are more flexible and less costly than the traditional office.
Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist, says:
The past decade or two has been about standalone productivity. The future is going to be about connected productivity. This is the next generation of office evolution. Prior to the Internet, we used PCs for personal productivity. We use physical offices for effective communication and collaboration. Internet changes everything. As we are all constantly connected, the core meaning of an office changes. With everyone connected through the Internet, the physical presence doesn’t really matter as we are working virtually through the Internet.
Virtual office applications are going to play a very important role as we all are connected through the Internet. An online workspace acts as a common location we all work/interact/communicate/collaborate together. It is important that these virtual office applications work globally across locations, languages, devices, operating systems and browsers. The browser becomes the application we all are connected through. We already see this today as a browser is the common application that exists in Macs, PCs, mobile devices and even gaming devices.
Once all users are connected, we will see ourselves working more and more globally. The only common thread is that we are all connected through the Internet and the browser is the new platform. This fundamentally changes the core concept of an office. We no longer will need to ‘go to work.’ We just ‘connect to work.’ The future is going to be about ‘connected productivity.’
Adam Stark, president of Stark Business Solutions in Westchester, New York, says:
I’m not sure that it will look that much different than it does today. Styles and technologies may change, but I believe that people will always be looking for a nice environment to work in where they are surrounded by people with whom they wish to interact.
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About the Author
Rob Zeus July 28th, 2009 at 9:35 am
There are definitely a lot of takes on what the office of the future will look like. I think the keyword is diversity. Offices will continue to evolve in terms of space usage, technologies, etc. I didn’t agree with Stark’s take on the matter. I think offices of the future will look much different if by no other reason than the technologies.
Elizabeth Sanchez July 29th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I like this roundtable discussion about the office of the future. I think there are some diverse perspectives here. I was also struck by Stark’s answer that it won’t look much different than it does today. I can see what he means about the baseline of the function of an office, but I think there’s a lot more room for creative thought around the use of serviced offices, coworking spaces and telecommuting that we can consider.
Melanie Jones July 29th, 2009 at 11:53 am
The fellow from Zoho said this: “The past decade or two has been about standalone productivity. The future is going to be about connected productivity.” That’s a simple way to put it. I agree with that. Today we have more specialists, more layers of approval, more departments, more fingers in the pie, as it were. That bogs down the production pipeline. The office of the future will accommodate for that with what he rightly called connected productivity.
Maggie Correta July 29th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Roger is right. Computers have made it possible to work from just about anywhere. The office of the future will make that reality more visible as wireless networks become more robust and more widely available. You cell phone switches to a land line when you enter the building, etc. There are lots of possibilities for mobility. The serviced office will make mobile workers more productive with the technology that becomes available.
Bill Brookshire July 30th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I think if you ask 50 different people what the office of the future will look like, you’ll get 50 different answers. It’s really hard to predict at some level how the use of office space, technologies and even lease agreements will change. Who would have predicted some of the office technology we have today? But it’s fun to look into the future of offices.
The Evolving 21st Century Virtual Office August 18th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
[...] couldn’t be more right. This caught my attention because we recently did a series on the office of the future. This picks up where we left off to take a look at how the virtual office is [...]