The fastest way to freeze innovation is to stick your employees in an ice cube tray.  “Clean, very white, and efficient” rarely describe the creative workspace.

In “A Capitalist’s Dilemma, Whoever Wins this Tuesday,” Clayton M. Christensen describes three types of innovations: Empowering, Sustaining and Efficiency.  Christensen argues that the US has under-invested in Empowering innovation that “transform complicated and costly products available to a few into simpler, cheaper products available to the many.”  I argue that large-scale irony happens when the workforce building Empowering innovation shows up to an office built for Efficiency.

“How do you like your new space?”

The truth is that I like the aesthetics of my new workspace, pictured above.  I live in a contemporary house, and I enjoy modernist design.  But I don’t think it’s the right design for a team tasked with Empowering innovation. By comparison, take a look at this photo of Al Gore’s office space.  Countless stacks of research piled across a broad workspace. A triptych of flat-panel monitors serve a smorgasbord of information to the former Vice President.  We don’t need to know exactly what he’s staring at.  This is the portrait of an Information Artist delivering  Empowering innovation on a global scale.

In contrast, take a look at this photo of a garment factory in the 1970s.  Workers are organized for efficiency and provided just enough space for the tools of their trade and for temporary storage of the end product.  And this is the industrial workspace we expect to see when Efficient innovation is the primary driver.  Assuming that this factory was operated in accordance with the fair labor laws of the time, there is nothing wrong with this use of space. We can assume that workers and management were in agreement about the purpose of the space.  This was a playground for Efficient innovation.  You can almost imagine the man standing at center with a clipboard and stopwatch, trying to figure out how to best organize workers, space, equipment and time to maximize production.

So what’s the problem with my clean, very white, efficient cube pictured above?

The issue is that the space is clean, very white, and efficient.  It was designed to support a factory of Information Workers.  One argument for the new design was that it increases collaboration.  The cube walls are only half-height.  Look at the picture of the textile factory again.  While there is no physical barrier to collaboration, we don’t see any hobnobbing either.  And why should we?  The purpose of the space is to get the craft done efficiently.  I haven’t seen any new collaboration since occupying my cube.  In fact, voices have dropped to a whisper.

But the real problem with my clean, very white, efficient cube is that my team does not identify with the Information Workforce.  We are creative professionals, Information Artists who prefer massive amounts of data served raw, messy and spilling across the monitors and tables.

A workspace needs to support more than the number of workers.  A workspace is an asset shared by management and staff towards a common innovative purpose.