3 ms·
The benefits probably depend a lot on the size of the company... many of these ‘serendipitous’ conversations I have had were in fact network effects, but techno
by kristianbrigman 5y ago
The benefits probably depend a lot on the size of the company... many of these ‘serendipitous’ conversations I have had were in fact network effects, but technological - I accidentally found out about someone else’s skunkworks project we found useful, or some new piece of technology developed just a row or two over we never knew about.
I would imagine the is less true in small companies, some because of the size, but also because of the homogeneity of focus - you have to have a different environment, a different work biome for the output to diverge enough to take advantage of this.
- ghaff 5y agoThe opposite is true as well. At a large company, spread across floor, buildings, and locations, the only in-person "serendipitous" conversations you're going to have are with a fairly small slice of the company. That seems a pretty shaky foundation for innovation to depend on.
- kristianbrigman 5y agoYeah, one interesting thing in the article was an offhand comment about how too much openness actually was counterproductive because people put on headphones, so didn't actually interact. Here probably, there is a 'right' amount of mixing with disparate groups. In the (admittedly only two) large groups I've worked in, you really needed to interact outside your local group to get anything useful done anyways. Actually, this reminds of the network effects section of 'Where good things come from' (Steven Johnson), which actually points out there is a right amount of 'edge' density - too little and you don't see outside your local group enough for ideas to flow; too much and ideas flow but don't tend to die before they can reach critical mass.
- regularfry 5y agoIn a small company you're likely to wear more hats, though, so while the focus of the org is smaller, your piece of it is bigger.