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/ BUILDING DIALOGUE / DECEMBER 2015
Why Your Boardroom Is Gathering Dust:
The Nature of Successful Collaborative Spaces
G
roup work is essential to the knowledge
worker’s day. On average, employees are
spending only 53 percent of their day in
their individual workspace. This data impacts the
square footage allocations once devoted to individu-
ally assigned space, reassigning it to compose a wide
variety of individual, collaborative and social activity
areas.
Collaborative work is shifting from large meeting
spaces to smaller spaces as meetings tend to be short-
er, more casual and with fewer members. But merely
increasing quantity of meeting spaces doesn’t always
equal more effective space.
Knoll sought out to understand how effective are
group spaces, what drives their utilization, and what
new typologies of meeting spaces have emerged due
to technology and user preferences. This report gath-
ered insights from 38 leading organizations across nine
industries on the nature of successful collaboration to
better inform the creating and planning collaborative
successful spaces. Knoll also engaged Ratekin Consult-
ing, a leading workplace research firm, to gather infor-
mation on world-class collaborative environments.
EFFECTIVENESS
Organizations know that group work is central to
success. As the workplace increasingly responds with
team-oriented spaces, they oftenprove to be hit ormiss.
The organizations participating in this study were cho-
sen because they are perceived to have high-quality,
leading-edge collaborative spaces. Yet, only two in five
participants rated their group spaces as “successful.” Al-
most half of participants rated their spaces asmediocre
at best. Today’s collaborative spaces fall short of expec-
tations, driven by a lack of spaces to support the most
valued types of collaboration, and a lack of adaptability
of both furnishings and technology within the spaces.
BEHAVIOR and INTENTION
To understand and plan better meeting spaces, we
must first understand the intentions behind our meet-
ings. Historically, most collaboration occurred through
large, formal, lengthy meetings that offered a struc-
tured interaction to foster group decision-making and
group exchanges of information. As a result, the dom-
inant space solution looked like a formal boardroom.
This worked ideally for many years, however, two ele-
ments of collaboration have dramatically evolved:
1: Employees desire social connection and engage-
ment as part of their collaborative experience.
2: Organizations need both operational excellence
and innovation to succeed.
a) Operational Excellence: relates to process effi-
ciencies such as speed of group decision-making.
b) Innovation is nurtured through informal, social,
creative interactions.
The need for innovation and speed of decision-mak-
ing are the principal drivers behind the charge toward
collaborative work. Researchers wanted to learn what
spaces are supporting these “effective” interactions.
DEFINITION: effective collaboration is made of two
elements:
• “Equal exchange” in which the contribution by
Jenny West
Architecture
and Design
Manager,
Knoll
Moving Forward
Three-quarters of participating organizations offer at least seven types of group space, including the newer
categories of videoconference and café spaces.
