My Space - For creativity.

I read an interesting article in Scientific American Mind magazine about creativity and environment. It's an ongoing question how our work environment affects our creativity and productivity. Any research so far has come up with little more than - stick a pot plant in the office...that'll get 'em innovating like crazy! But our work cubicle might just hold the key to employee happiness, engagement and creativity!




"..a cubicle is more than a mere physical workspace. In recent years, social and organisational psychologists have begun to amass evidence that the character of people's personal work environments affect their performance in profound and surprising ways. The size of our desks, our proximity to natural light, the quality of the air we breathe and our privacy (or lack thereof) - are all major predictors of our comfort, our contentment and our productivity."

But it might not simply be a question of getting a fabulous Soho design team in to jazz up the open plan. The latest research has shown it's more about the control an individual has over his or her environment. Or to use the first third of Dan Pink's triptych - a sense of 'autonomy'. In this latest study 4 groups were put to work for a short period of time in 4 different environments and then monitored for productivity and creativity. The four environments were set up as follows:

1) A lean basic office space - "a sanitized space containing only the items needed to perform the tasks: a pencil, paper, bare desk and a swivel chair"

2) An enriched office space - "decorated with plants and art, including several bright Georgia O'Keefe-style pictures"

3) The empowered office space - where participants were provided with the same art and plants as were used in the enriched office space but were allowed to arrange them however they chose or not use them at all.

4) The dis-empowered office space - where "participants were given the opportunity to decorate, but when they had finished doing so, the experimenter rearranged the office so that it matched the enriched condition"


And take a guess - in which environment were participants happier and more productive?

Yes, indeed. You guessed it. Number 3. Participants in the 'lean' or 'dis-empowered' environment were the least productive. Whilst participants with some control over their environment were twice as productive as those in the enriched environment.

Autonomy really does seem to lead to increased productivity. Of course this could lead to anything from graffiti-ed office partitions to foam parties in the board room.

Or it might just start with letting ME decide where I put my pot plant!

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