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The Flaw Within Networking Events

The Flaw Within Networking Events

Networking events – we’ve all probably attended one or if not, have been invited to at some point of our life. It’s one of those initially promising gatherings that are undeniably awkward in nature. Most attendees would dress up and make the effort of going in the hopes that they’ll meet new contacts that could be of help later on in their career. Yet truthfully speaking, these same individuals would end up in a corner, drinking and chatting with someone they already knew.

One would assume that introverts would probably despise such events but much to the surprise of everyone, even extroverts carry indifferent views towards them. It’s not just reserved peers who come home feeling that they’ve wasted their time, outgoing attendees would often wonder why they never made the most of their day at these events.

Keynote speaker and best-selling author David Burkus reassures professionals that there’s nothing wrong with them. The event itself is the one that’s actually failing.

A Gap in the Networking Events Design

After reviewing dozens of studies on networking events in preparation for his book Friend of a Friend” Understanding the Hidden Networks That Can Transform Your Life and Your Career”, Burkus wrote in a Harvard Business Review article that there’s an overall implication that the aforementioned gatherings don’t actually live up to their name. A majority of us resorts to staying inside of our own comfort zones – talking to colleagues present or people we deem similar to us – in situations that require us to meet new people. The idea of networking events is doomed by its very design alone.

A notable study conducted by two Columbia Business School professors presented that even the well-intentioned professionals fail to meet enough new people to justify the affectivity of system. It became clear to them that our comfort zones can be a little too inviting.

So how do we avoid the magnetic pull of staying inside our bubble? Simply, stop trying.

New Circumstances and Situations

Weird as it seems, one of the best strategies is to actually stop trying to meet new people.

If we want to make new connections with diverse individuals, we must shift our focus from the relationship itself to activities that you can participate in. Sociologist and network scientist Brian Uzzi says that meaningful networks aren’t made through casual interactions. Rather, they thrive in high-stake activities that allows people to connect in deeper ways.

The one flaw with networking events is that it carries no other goal than to get people into conversations. Without a bigger purpose, there’s little to no incentive for individuals to move beyond activities that make them comfortable.

The higher the stakes, the more we push further to meet and connect with more diverse groups.

A Deeper Connection

The well-known movement of shared offices and coworking spaces stands as living proof that spontaneous interactions create better connections.

Priding itself in authentic communities, its open layout have allowed members to casually interact and socialize with one another. Its gathering events allows them to form deeper connections than those that root from networking events.

Talk to us today and we’ll help you build stronger relationships while having fun!

Diversity: How Individual Differences Produce Creativity

Diversity: How Individual Differences Produce Creativity

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?

The Different Influences

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.

Strong Leadership

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.

Inclusivity and Knowledge Sharing Culture

“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.

Diversity: A Place for Everyone

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!

Taking Risks: How Stephen Curry’s Strategy Helped Build His Career

Taking The Right Risks: How Stephen Curry's Strategy Helped Build His Career

Famous NBA player Stephen Curry triumphs roots from hard work and passion, but there’s another component present behind his success story; courage – the daring acts of taking new risks every game.

Curry has built his career around taking three pointers from crazy distances – shots that not a lot of mundane players would take. Defenders tend to dismiss these long-distanced shots because of the low likelihood of the ball actually making it to the basket, but the basketball star worked and worked until the chances weren’t unlikely for him.

The game that Curry built for himself is a classic example of braving competitive risks. Instead of going head-to-head against other players in the scarce area right under the ring, he would set himself in a place where others wouldn’t even dare to think of going for” 30 feet away from the basket. He developed a distinctive strength of making long-distance shots.

And though it seems like the aforementioned game plan can only be applied in sports, experts suggest that the same disruptive strategy can be implemented in business. Look for a gap, something that isn’t being done, something that nobody else is doing it. See if it would be beneficial for you to learn how to be good at it.

Disruptive Moves and Right Risks

If you’re having second thoughts on your career or feel that your skills have gone rusty, then maybe it’s high time that you shake up your career path. These precarious moves are what keeps a career from stagnating.

It’s a high-percentage move that if done well, offers great possibilities of success, rapid acceleration, and hyper-growth. A majority of us have become aware of the importance of market risks when it comes to starting a business, but not a lot of us know that the same unprecedented moves are what fuels individual growth. Businesses can only create disruption in the market if it starts from those behind its operations.

People often fail implementing these risks because they don’t know what it looks like when applied to their own careers, so here are a few ideas that you can use to accelerate your career:

• Curate a position with your strengths as a template

Etsy’s general counsel, Sarah Feingold, landed her job by convincing the organization’s founder that they need her as an in-house counsel. She took interest of offering up her services because of her side job as a jeweler on Etsy. Mixing her artistic talent and passion for law, she managed to land a role that didn’t exist yet.

It’s not hard to find stories of career sprouting from an individual’s love for a certain activity or skill. Visit your local coworking space and there you would see a handful of freelancers creating a living out of their hobbies.

Find something you’re good at and start from there.

• Look for opportunities outside your comfort zone

Don’t let the discipline written on your diploma stop you from exploring. Truth is, a majority of today’s in demand jobs requires a wide range of skills – some of which was never taught in college during our early years. Each individual carries a set of skills that can contribute to several jobs. It’s up to us to get out of our box and look for opportunities in places we’ve never dared to.

One good example of this is the collaborative culture built within coworking spaces. The interdisciplinary environment that these shared offices have made it possible for its members to corroborate with one another and help each other find new opportunities outside their domains.

The successful collaborations made within its diverse community is proof that challenging the status quo can actually produce great results.

 

Creating risk-embracing moves helps generate innovation within teams, firms and even industries. Ask yourself if there is an unmet need or unoccupied niche that you can fulfill with your skills. This is your new opportunity, so be brave and take it.

Talk to us today and we’ll help you conquer your fear of taking the long shot.

Robots or Humans? Predicting the Strategical Future of Work

Robots or Humans? Predicting the Strategical Future of Work

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?

A Flawed Model

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.

Strategical, Tactical, Robots

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.

Rethinking What The Workforce Can Do

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.

The Many Harmful Outcomes of Prevailing Incivility at Work

The Many Harmful Outcomes of Prevailing Incivility At Work

The tension in today’s global market is getting more and more intense as the years go by. Companies and organizations all around the world are doing their best to tap maximum efficiency amongst their employees. Research teams are being organized to study and conduct experiments in curing burn out.

In spite of all the efforts being made by organizations all around the world to improve today’s work environment even more, there’s a rampant phenomenon that’s slowly diminishing the talents of this generation’s labor force.

Workplace incivility is on the rise and not only will it affect information sharing and teamwork, it could create lasting damages that organizations should worry about. The buildup of rude actions that leave employees feeling disrespected – intentionally ignored, undermined by coworkers, or belittled by leaders – contributes to employee burnout.

According to a research conducted over the past few years amongst thousands of workers around the world, nearly half of participants from the year 1998 said that they experienced unruly treatment at least once a month. The aforementioned figure then rose to 55 percent during the year 2011 and 62 percent come 2016.

In reality, it is impossible to pin down the cause to one factor. Some have said that existing workplace relationships may slowly be fraying as less people come in to the office and more are transitioning to shared offices. Some have pointed it to be influenced by one’s genetic makeup while some said that it could be the growing narcissism of the younger generation. The globalization of the majority of today’s industries has been suspected to create cultural clashes and today’s technology has also contributed a fair amount of communication gaps and misunderstandings.

Whatever maybe the underlying causes for this phenomenon, the damage incivility creates to an enterprise’s budget rises as the employee stress levels increase

Incivility and Harmful Outcomes

The magnitude of damage that workplace incivility can inflict depends on its degree but the wide reach of its negative effects remain the same. It creates impact to workplace performance, employee turnover, customer experience and collaboration.

Almost everyone who experiences toxic treatment performs worse than those who don’t. Research also indicates that forty-seven percent of those who experienced poor behavior amongst their colleagues admitted to decreasing the time they spent at work and thirty-eight said that they intentionally reduced the quality of their work. Sixty-six percent reported the observation that their performance declined and seventy-eight said that their commitment to their employers have decreased.

Several losses have gone undetected the moment employees leave the company. The trend of professionals who quit their corporate jobs due to awful working environment is becoming a common occurrence and they don’t typically admit as to why. As a result, turnover costs add up quickly.

A pressing damage that it creates involves the potential of employees. Engagement, teamwork, knowledge sharing and innovation wane among those who are half-heartedly working

It also creates an impact to customer experience. Consumers are less likely to interact with businesses they perceive to be uncivil – be it that the rude approach is directed to them or other employees.

A Safe Place

Experts have come up with several ways to reduce the alarming rate of incivility within organizations, but the most crucial first step that companies should take is improving your environment and culture.

Curating an environment that encourages open communication and constructive criticism can influence a team’s culture. One example of how workplace environment and culture influence a person’s behavior is the well-acclaimed shared offices, coworking spaces.

Taking pride in its community and thriving environment, startups, freelancers and even large corporations enjoy the autonomy it gives them. From when and where they work down to how they interact, professionals have complete control of their work day. Moreover, its supportive community promotes collaboration and meaningful conversations. Incivility is almost non-existent within its walls as each members learn how to understand one another despite their differences.

Civility is paramount to success.  When a team of talented individuals are all motivated to work with one another towards reaching one goal, there is almost nothing that they can’t do.

Be part of a community that encourages you and your team to become closer and talk to us today!

Why You Shouldn’t Eat Lunch At Your Desk

Why You Shouldn't Eat Lunch At Your Desk

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.

Lunch Breaks with Good People

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.

Drowning The World Out: What Headphones Mean to Coworking Members

Drowning The World Out: What Headphones Mean to Coworking Members

Though fairly well received by the great majority, coworking spaces still have non-believers. To some, they view open plan offices as productivity killers. Despite of the claims that it was designed to improve efficiency, the distractions found in almost every space – noise, chatter, phones ringing, loud chats, coughs and even sniffles – contributes to a halfhearted day at work.

Some have slammed the movement for “sabotaging” employees’ ability to stay focused. According to a certain study, office workers lose 28% of their time because of interruptions. But still, shared offices and coworking spaces continue to grow rapidly. Experts from Deskmag have already predicted that 1.7 million people would have joined coworking by the end of 2018.

The fact still remains, its benefits are clear yet at the same time, they still have their fair share of disadvantages. And for members, the commonly complained noise is a small price to pay for the immeasurable assets they gain from the providers. Moreover, it seemed like a majority of them have found a classic work around the issue – the utilization of headphones or earphones.

Cancelling the Noise

Headphones or earphones have now become the walls of coworking spaces. Allowing members to block out background noise, it’s becoming a common occurrence among shared offices around the world throughout a work day as employees tackle tasks or projects that require great concentration and focus.

In the UK, community assistants and managers say that an estimated 50% of subscribers use headphones regularly – typically listening to music as they work on their respective assignments. Not only are they doing this to cancel the distractive noise around them, the act of listening to music itself helps them concentrate.

Admittedly, those who work in open offices are more prone to distractions that those who are found in traditional workspaces. But some have found a way to balance both their need for acoustical focus and creative collaboration through them.

Headphones act as a layer of protection and is considered to be a universal way of saying ‘Don’t Disturb’. Today’s young professionals flock coworking spaces in the aim of becoming part of a community that would could help them conspire with other like-minded individuals while still carrying the need for uninterrupted work. By using earphones, they can easily fixate themselves to the task at hand.

In addition to this, it helps neutralize the overwhelming feeling of being in a busy room with tons of conversations happening all at once.

Headphones, a Contradiction

Despite of the claims that it’s a well-embraced norm in coworking spaces, its presences actually poses a much greater question: as it blocks out conversations, isn’t it defeating the greater cause of the movement – fostering collaboration and community?

Contributor for Harvard Business Review, Anne Kreamer, believe that it actually does.

She suggests that a lot can be missed out when you’re wearing headphones – such as, important details and the so called “collective high” experienced in these spaces that help build strong coworking community.

Kreamer adds that it’s a huge and real loss in terms of career development as you are missing the opportunity to create important relationships.

Regardless of how it somehow contradicts the main reason why the movement has grown into the global market that it is, members and community managers have accepted it into the culture. If you take a general look at work environments, it’s almost impossible to stop someone who doesn’t have their headphones in.

After that all that is said and done, it all boils down to the fact that each and every one of us have our way of working and in spite of all the distractions, coworking spaces gives us that freedom of going through our own pace – something that we cannot easily find in traditional offices.

The Reality Of Chasing After Your Dreams

The Reality Of Chasing After Your Dreams

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.

People First Philosophy, Designing Built Environments for People

People First Philosophy, Designing Built Environments for People

There’s a prominent trend that can be observed within the offices of companies across several industries. The same aforementioned inclination has been seen in office space providers – from your traditional private offices to the neophytes of the coworking movement.

Gone are the days when costing and high-end specifications were the main focus of both developers and designers in built environments – today, each and every one’s frame of mind is leaning into the imposition of humanistic environments.

It doesn’t really sound as surprising, frankly – with each one of us spending 90 percent of our time indoors, it’s only fitting that we spend ample time in studying the wellness of our developments. Several research and studies have shown that ‘healthier’ offices boost human productivity. From improved views, well-designed artificial lighting, increase use of daylight down to good air quality – each of the said factor contributes to the betterment of tenants.

And thought we only spend the remaining 10 percent of our time outdoors, it still carries a significant influence to what we think feel about our daily lives. The structures surrounding a built environment is as equally important as its indoor counterpart.

In lieu of discussing the kinds of materials to be used in constructing and the finishes that makes buildings aesthetically pleasing to the eyes, experts suggest that both employers and workspace providers take enough time to understand the aspects of urban spaces that has a direct effect in the physical and mental well-being of its occupants.

Human Centric Built Environments

In order to achieve progressive and productive offices, one should consciously curate them for people. Arising from the fundamental ideology that future urban living starts by creating environment-friendly, active and engaged spaces, our real estate industry has the capacity to address today’s modern challenges such as sustainability and the fortification of a sense of community and identity.

Organizations, experts and leaders of today’s industry has come to the realization that the one-size fits all approach we have grown accustom of, no longer works.

Susan Szenasy, editor of the architectural design journal, Metropoli Magazine, said in a panel last year that they have observed a grassroots movement leaning towards the comprisal of human skill and talent in creating strategies for the workplace. There is no black and white distinction on which one between fully open layouts and traditional private offices works well. Nor is there a definite ratio in combining both of them – making it more detrimental for us to go with a human centric approach.

Global design company IDEO came up with a framework known as “Design Thinking” and has been praised to be a good starting point for built environments and in creating people first headquarters. Though there are other structures present, its simplicity accentuated the concept among others. It gives both businesses and designers a look at designs from the point of view of its end user.

Thinking Process

IDEO’s concept requires you to go through a thinking process that undergoes three stages – each one containing a set of questions that serves as guidelines in designing a human-centered office.

Its first stage, inspiration, suggests observing the current landscape of the workplace. It is important to play close attention to what the end users would embrace – what works for them and what doesn’t. Draw inspiration from other organizations or even try checking out the current trends.

Visit serviced offices such as the widely popular coworking spaces and physically observe the work and cultural aspects of the phenomena that employee surveys simply can’t measure.

Ideation – the second stage – asks you to keep an open mind in generating as many ideas as possible. What layouts or designs can help aid employee productivity and happiness based on what we have observed earlier. Look at each of their distinctive pros and cons for your employees or members. Will open layouts be beneficial? Should you designate a recreational area? Keeping your occupants in mind will help you rule out ideas until you are left with one that you can implement and test.

Lastly, Implementation is its third stage. Test layouts on smaller scales ort teams and create prototype models to get feedback from your employees. By the time that you reach full implementation stage, you will now have a better idea of what they want and what works well for your business.

One example of this would be signing up a specific team to a coworking space and giving them ample time to try out its open layout and wide array of work areas. Observe this for a week and continually get feedback from them until you find the appropriate built environments for your employees.

Helping Hands: New Digital Technology Driving Start Ups to the Future

Helping Hands: New Digital Technology Driving Startups to the Future

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.

Defining Digital

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%).

Digital Technology

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.