- What happens when you give people
the ability to freely mingle and exchange ideas?
Well, you might remember this thing
called the Reconnaissance.
No, seriously, a few years ago
there was a popular book, The Medici Effect,
by Frans Johansson, that made this argument.
Now although I have some issues
with the author's interpretations of history,
I think the basic premise is accurate.
What a good collaborative workplace does
is extend brainstorming to a continuous environment
instead of a stand-alone event.
When people have the ability to keep the conversation going,
there's more opportunity for ideas to gel and take shape.
It also extends the range of participants
beyond the people sitting in a conference room
to the entire team,
including people who aren't on-site
and may not typically have the ability
to follow the discussion, let alone participate in it.
The more people who can play,
the longer the ball can stay in the air.
Capturing discussions in a continuing forum
also allows for going back and reviewing it later too,
something that's not that practical
with a whiteboard in a conference room.
Sure, you can take a picture of it,
but then people have to know where that picture is,
and the interactivity of a photograph
is more or less nonexistent.