The Secret to Building High Energy Innovation Spaces
Innovation Spaces — which can refer to any space intentionally designed to foster and facilitate good innovation work — come in all sorts, shapes, and sizes. Perhaps the most commonly understood of these is the ubiquitous Innovation Lab. However aside from formal “labs” per se, Innovation Spaces can also be incorporated in many ways into other, more comprehensive spaces, so long as they meet certain criteria that is important to innovation work. Examples of this range widely — from large open collaboration spaces to R&D Labs to Advanced Design Studios — each facilitating some important aspect of the overall innovation work needing to be done. And while there are some who question the value of Innovation Labs and other dedicated Innovation Spaces, the real issue is not the lab or space itself (though a poor design can in fact fail an organization), but rather how the organization is using these labs and spaces. If they are merely using them as a staging ground for Innovation Theater in order to impress their customers, then in the long they are wasting their time and money — and frustrating their workers (which will ultimately backfire on them). But if they are genuinely using these labs and spaces to advance really good innovation work — and let’s be clear… there are many organizations who are in fact doing just that — then these labs and spaces can be a really great investment…
