Havens give people a place to escape distraction and focus on individual work.
At this point, anyone in business understands that innovation is not just the name of the game—it is the game. So much so that we likely don’t need to quote a survey of 1,400 CEOs in 80 countries that found that innovation was the thing they most wanted to strengthen or give examples of the lengths companies will go to to achieve innovation.
Innovation is a bit of a mystery—if it was easy, every company would be innovating and no one would be asking questions about the best ways to do so. One of the things we do know, however, is that some ways of working are better for innovation than others. “While remote work clearly improves individual worker productivity by double digits, the more interactive and stimulating face-to-face interaction between employees is the key to dramatically increasing the much higher value (at least five times more) that is added by maximizing collaboration, creativity, and innovation,” says Dr. John Sullivan, a professor of Management at San Francisco State and an expert on human resources metrics.