A large majority of today’s budding entrepreneurs are setting aside cultural and political differences in the hopes of creating a more diverse team within the workforce. The reason behind this trend? The premise that organizations with a wide variety of members are far more creative than those of teams coming from a similar background.

With several literatures backing up this ideology and the constant encouragement by the public to break down walls, it’s not surprising that a lot of companies are looking to diversify their workplace.

Still the question remains, just how much can diversity affect the creativity of one team? How does one strengthen them through leadership and inclusion?

For us to evaluate just how effective it is in enhancing inventiveness, it’s important to know how it influences idea generation and implementation. Viewed as two different scenarios, the diversity of a team dictates just how successful they will be in generating ideas and implementing ideas.

Recent experimental studies have suggested that though heterogeneous team composition seen as an advantage in producing a wider range of original ideas, its benefits ultimately weaken when it’s time to decide which among them will be implemented. A meta-analysis conducted on 108 studies and more than 10,100 teams report that the enhanced creativity produced by teams with higher diversity is interrupted by deep-rooted social conflict and decision-making dilemmas that are rarely found in homogenous groups.

Though it follows the creative process of free thinking, openness to failure and mind wandering, it should be immediately followed by convergent thinking and effective project management for it to become actual innovations. It takes more than just diversity to implement a company’s wide array of creative ideas.

Admittedly, diverse teams are prone to conflicts, and these arguments can only be mitigated if they are lead effectively. It’s not rocket science that strong leadership is a fundamental resource for organizations across industries.

When members set aside their own agendas to corroborate with others for the common benefit of the project, the natural tension between wanting to get ahead of prospect competition  and needing to get along with everyone is articulated.

It’s important for homogenous teams to learn how to empathize with their coworkers and to see things from other perspectives. Only when they have learned to manage their own conscious and unconscious biases will they be able to agree on one thing.

“Diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance” diversity advocate, Verña Myers said. In order for leaders and organizations to truly stick with practicing diversity, it’s important that everyone feels they are included, that their voices matter.

Hence, creating an open knowledge sharing culture is present within the team to truly enhance creativity. Everyone should be encouraged to speak up and leaders need to create an environment wherein it’s safe to share novel ideas. Implementing feedback and sharing credit for team success also aids in promoting inclusivity.

Though skeptics would say that diversity may bring more problems and complications than creativity, the rising movement of coworking spaces is proof that diversity and inclusivity could create great results for everyone participating.

Well-known for its diverse community, these shared offices are attracting startups, entrepreneurs and even large corporations across several industries for the authentic networking it provides to its members. With a culture that promotes inclusivity and interdisciplinary collaborations, coworking allows professionals to experience what its like to work when the walls separating us from one another is diminished.

Creativity isn’t the only thing that businesses can unlock when they create diverse representation and inclusivity in their workforce. Though complicated and intricate, the process is worth it when it leads the team to sustainable growth.

Produce equal opportunities for every member of your team and talk to us today about coworking spaces!

As scary as it sounds, technology is slowly replacing jobs – frankly speaking, those who are holding these jobs are now slowly being replaced by robots.

And though one would assume that manufacturers and production companies are the only ones to be affected by this change, the chances of other industries being saved from the AIs are slim to none. Even knowledge workers are at risk. Recent surveys said that 39% of jobs from the legal industry could be automated in the next ten years. A separate study has said that even accountants have a 95% of losing their jobs to automation.

The manufacturing industry would feel this change much sooner than most.  With “robotic bricklayers” rising in the market –  machine learning algorithms programmed for optical part sorting, automated quality control, failure detection, and improved productivity and efficiency. The National Institute of Standards predicts that “machine learning can improve production capacity by up to 20%” and can help reduce raw materials waste by 4%.

 There are several literatures and other reports predicting the loss of millions of jobs by the year 2020 – providing us with a grim reading of what the future may entail. But with all the technology being served on the table, one question remains: where does this leaves us, humans?

Business leaders and executives are captivated by the idea of saving them millions and millions of labor costs without sacrificing the quality of product they provide. The idea of having AI technology to enhance production is a dream come true for a majority of corporations and as they become blinded by these shiny machineries, corporate leaders seemed to have forgotten the effect this could mean for the people behind their operations.

Though many would believe that it would be best for companies to have lesser employees, CEO and founder of Fetch Robotics, Melonee Wise says otherwise. She cautions the arrival of AIs isn’t as black and white as executives would think – for every robot in the world is a human behind it taking good care of its system. She adds that the point of technology is to boost productivity, not cut workforce.

Consulting firm McKinsey took matters into their hands and started studying the kind of work most appropriate to automation. Their findings conclude that they create betters results in technical work – leaning towards tactical applications.

On the other hand, task that require high degree of imagination, creative analysis and strategic thinking is harder to automate. The current technology available as we speak finds activities involving managing and developing people difficult. These AIs cannot apply their expertise in decision making, planning, or creative work.

Its safe to say that there is still room for our workforce. There are still tasks and projects that can only be successfully accomplished with the innate ability of humans. This poses a new threat to managements around the world; how will they integrate this new technology into their current workflow without disrupting peace within its workforce.

The goal is for technology to take over some tasks without replacing the people who have spearheaded this work. Wise reminds the majority that robots and AIs themselves are just tools that leaders can utilize how they see fit. Corporations have the choice to whether replace human work or augment the new technology into their workforce.

As mentioned earlier by McKinsey, creativity and imagination still play an important role at work. And finding a way for both creativity and automation to thrive in one realm could be the best way to go. One proof of this possibility is the well-received, coworking spaces. Priding itself in its ability in cohabitating the polar opposites, providers have designed these serviced offices to be flexible enough to accommodate new technology and aesthetically refreshing to encourage creativity.

By reshaping their current workforce, businesses can generate a new human resource development agenda that provides success that is both technological and human.

Some of us have been guilty of this before – eating lunch at our desks because there’s simply too much to do and we can’t be bothered to get up. Though we initially think that this helps us increase our productivity, Fast Company says otherwise.

Author Bob Pozen says that instead of thinking how you utilize lunch to get more things done, see it for the function that it actually serves. He adds that maybe exposing yourself to germs isn’t that worth it if you can actually get more if you step away from your desk.

Admittedly, the notion of having a quick lunch is indeed productive – in a sense that it takes us less time. It’s a hard and fast rule, but it’s not really what we need. We want a functional rule that would help us make the most out of our workday.

Pozen says that eating alone can help you recharge your personal resources. The absence of stimulation actually encourages associative or integrative thought – both of which can spur one’s creativity. If by any chance you have an idea in your head, you can take this alone time to work on it without any interruptions. He adds that you can also use this time to replenish you energy by taking a walk or taking a 20 minute nap. Each suggestion, of course, would work differently on each individual. Hence, he suggests experimenting with a few different approaches.

And other else than providing employees some time for themselves, lunch is also considered as one of the most effective social activity in the office.

The well-acclaimed and now global trend of coworking couldn’t have emphasized it enough; building a strong sense of community within a company – or team – plays a vital role in creating a thriving working environment.

Pioneers of the movement have set standards and several guidelines on how to curate or strengthen an enterprise’s culture and one of the most suggested activity is sharing meals with one another.

Pozen further discussed in the aforementioned article that you don’t necessarily have to spend lunch all by yourself, its other function is to serve as an opportunity to socialize with your coworkers. Eating together can effectively create connections that could produce fortuitous results and fortifies trust within teams.

Providers of shared offices have utilized this in reinforcing unplanned collaborations and conversations by having in-house cafes and snack bars. Steve Jobs did the same thing back during the inception of the Pixar campus, but in his case, he put bathrooms in one central place so that individuals from different departments would run into each other alongside with their ideas.

CEO of the food startup ZeroCater, Arram Sabeti, says that eating together offers a lot value than what meets the eye. Managers can use this time to casually check in on on-going projects while establishing a much more personal relationship with their employees.

Even though some people nowadays view lunch breaks as something overrated, it’s still worth considering whether the way you are spending it right now is the most efficient way to go. Is it really helping you or is it costing you more in terms of your overall productivity?

Why don’t you have lunch with us and we’ll help you figure out a way of working that increases your proximity to success.

Dearest 18-year-old me,

I know that no matter where we are right now in terms of our academic career, it’s at this age that we made the conscious decision of fully committing ourselves to our love for writing.

That though we remain to be unsure where will be in the next year or two, one thing is for sure; we will chase after the one thing we truly believe we are good at. Doesn’t matter if it meant crawling our way to it or going back to school to become truly well-versed in the field – we’ve already made a vow to ourselves that this what we want to pursue.

Not just because of the simple fact that the activity puts so much joy and contentment in our little creative hearts, but also because of the concept of earning a living without sacrificing our sanity is a romantic idea that we’d love to experience in due time.

We’ve already fallen in love with the scene of our screenplays making it to the cinemas or TV sets, the scenarios of having the book we’ve worked hard on for years, boxes of copies being distributed around nationwide and going to several book signings.

These are the highlights of the life that we hope – and pray – to achieve in time.

This is the sugar-coated, romanticized version of chasing after your heart’s desire.

The nitty-gritty and much real scene of following your dreams is this: the moment we make something out of these long lists of plans and daydreams, its picturesque landscape loses its appeal and we’re left with no choice but to see things how they actually are.

Realistically speaking, the journey to our professional dreams – dream life – is much more slow and unromantic than our minds make it to be. It is monotonous and at the worse, painful. It is undeniably exhausting, frustrating and most of all, heart breaking.

The roads we need to travel are rough. With dark corners and alleyways in every turn. Its streets are full of people whose main role either falls between helping you move forward or blocking every maneuver you make.

But admittedly, it also has its lovely moments. In-between them though are uneventful and even, painstaking ones when everything we create doesn’t seem to be enough and we convince ourselves that what we made is mediocre that we start to fight those people who are coercing you to get out of your defense mechanism. Every now and then, we receive feedback, comments and opinions that makes us question whether or not should we still continue because we may never actually make it. Nights when we force to keep ourselves awake until 3 in the morning, only to have nothing to show for the hard work we have done and days when we’re awaken by our alarm clocks to the thought that we’d rather be anywhere else than here. Mundane ones of us doing the same task over and over again – thinking to ourselves that there has got to be something more than what we have right now.

These soul-crushing flashes of seconds and all the rejection and pain that we perceive vanishes in one sliver of uplifting occasions. We feel a surge calm and contentment flood in whenever we see ourselves working on a write up inside our favorite coworking space. When we receive a phone call bearing some good news – these are the moments that help us get back up again.

They let us find the spark – that feeling that makes our hearts race and gets our blood flowing – to move forward and become better at what we do.

This is what it feels like to follow your dreams. It’s heartbreak, its pain but more than that, it’s made up of ordinary days. A lot of flatness and tedium.

Following your dreams meant finding the power in yourself to overcome the thoughts of giving up because whenever we add up the small tasks and the boring moments, we are slowly but surely going down the right road.

So keep on living in these moments. Let’s keep writing and writing until we find ourselves doing bigger things. Keep on carrying out your day job and do so with pride. Keep the people you’ve met in your coworking community close and keep on learning from them – if possible, ask for their help.

Do this every day. Do this every hour, every minute, every second. Though it may seem humdrum, exhausting, and ordinary, keep on doing it. Be dedicated to our craft no matter how uncertain things get.

Be all of this for the following days and we’ll make it through.

Long before the advent of the digital age, buying something meant getting into your car and driving to the nearest store – with word of mouth as its key tool for promotions and are staffed by people who knows a handful of things about you. And the moment you move or visit to another town with a different set of shops, all the knowledge on how you consume products are gone.

But today, businesses now have the ability to keep valuable customer insights right at the tip of their fingers.

Unlike when only the big players can have access to this pool of knowledge, savvy small businesses is able to do the same things and more – now, they can actively gather the same amount of information with the aid of a wide array of digital techniques.

The term digital carries several definitions, but for small and medium enterprises, the word meant coworking, cloud computing, social media, online sales, search engine optimization, social graphs, mobile technology and the power to reach out to several talents from all around the world.

Small businesses found aid in the wide array of accessible digital technology of today. Offering startups the same opportunities that used to be only available to large enterprises, companies can now garner customer data, create market offers to customers, can help transient customers feel local, and gives them the ability to encourage customers to be part of a large community within hours – instead of years.

Managing director accounting software developer Intuit, Pernille Bruun-Jensen said in an article from The Guardian that the changes in today’s industry is surely exciting him. A large majority of today’s businesses are now online – either purely (12%) or partially (58%).

Amongst the large variety of modern techniques being used by several businesses across different industries, there are 3 distinct technologies that are used by many.

A big part of how SMEs are able to conduct operations online is through the onset of cloud computing – the capacity of one user to store documents and access services online instead of utilizing a software from their own computers. Surveys from last 2011 say that a third of small enterprises around the world are in the cloud, using one or more internet-based apps excluding email.

Startups are also taking advantage of social media. Bruun-Jensen says that its concept is exceptionally exciting to him and is being taken seriously by today’s industry as it is a simple and inexpensive way of meeting brand new potential customers.

45% of today’s SMEs gain success using social media and allocate twice as much of their budget as large companies do to it. Should there be the unfortunate event of falling short among your local community, you can expand your reach further, globally even, with the help of internet.

Digital technology isn’t just changing how businesses curate customer-centric products and strategies, it’s also slowly destroying the ideology of one single permanent office.  Today’s generation of young professionals can now take their work anywhere they want. Mobile phones and the internet have allowed them to work during normal hours, on weekends or even at night.

Skype, cloud-based customer management tools such as SalesForce and Nutshell has allowed companies to hire employees from almost everywhere in the world. Some businesses even run without a physical office.

Coworking has allowed startups to lease desks, private offices and even virtual offices for a cost-efficient rate. Operations can run with ease through a shared workplace that allows you to not only strengthen collaboration within your team but with several other teams or individuals as well.

SMEs flock these flexible workspaces not just for its rates and great amenities but for its immeasurable community of passionate people. Not only does it help them widen their network, it also introduces them to a large pool of creativity that can inspire innovation.