There is a theory that if you want to know how the economy is doing, you ask a taxi driver. The basis for this idea is that they are the first to know when money is getting tight, because people make more use of buses and tubes. In a similar way, one of the best ways of gauging workplace trends is to ask an office furniture company. They’ve always functioned in a fiercely competitive market, but are also the first to notice an economic downturn or a shift in the structure of their markets.
In recent years, this latter point has become of growing interest to the most progressive firms in the sector, who are responding not only with new products – the easy bit in some ways – but in asking existential questions about the nature of work, workplaces and their own place as businesses in a new order.
I recently visited the new Steelcase Learning + Innovation Centre (LINC) in Munich to witness how this process is playing out for the world’s largest manufacturer of office furniture. The firm recently celebrated its 100th anniversary and it seems pretty obvious that it intends to be around in another 100 so needs to cement a place in the new world of work.
Steelcase is an interesting firm to consider in this regard. Although it has a long history of designing groundbreaking products and developing the language we use to describe the workplace, and still plays on its associations with Frank Lloyd Wright, in many ways it lacks the design chops of its closest rival Herman Miller.