SIDEBAR #7: Have We Innovated Ourselves Into a Corner? And Does The Way Out Lie in the Built Environment?

After years of digital first innovation, have we hit a saturation point? And could bigger opportunities lay in reimagining the physical world we’ve somewhat neglected.

Full disclosure, this recording didn’t come out very well. The audio was choppy, the internet crapped out part way through and the flow of the chat just wasn’t what we normally get. So no recording this time out, and more just a bit of a write up of what was still a bit of an interesting sidebar chat. One where we actually disagreed a bit. Which was kinda refreshing!

For most of our careers, doing mostly corporate innovation corporate innovation type work, our focus has been on digital devices and what’s happening on a screen. So we’ve done lots of things that have involved dashboards, apps, backend systems.

It’s not just our experience. Somewhere amongst much of that focus innovation became something that was increasingly abstracted from the physical world we actually inhabit.

We’ve been thinking a bit about where this leaves us, and what it might mean for where innovation needs to go next.

Look back a century and private enterprise wasn’t primarily a tenant in the built environment, it was often the creator. Railways were developed by landowners and speculators., department stores were civic landmarks, some companies even built entire towns for their workers … not out of pure altruism, but because it made commercial sense. Healthier, happier workers were better workers. The physical world wasn’t something separate from business but part of the business model, and the relics of that world are still standing today. Some of them highly desirable tourist locations or affluent neighbourhoods.

This is where Charlie would like to remind you to visit Saltaire.

Photo by Oliver Sherwin on Unsplash

Today, it can feel like many companies have retreated from that realm where perhaps regulation, bureaucracy, shorter term shareholder demands and risk aversion have made the physical world feel off limits; too slow, too political, too messy. It’s easier to innovate in code than in concrete; easier to build a platform than a town plaza.

But does that retreat comes at a cost? WeWork offered an early glimpse of what it might look like when private companies tried to reimagine space. For a moment, it wasn’t just another serviced office provider, it was a provocation about what workspaces could be; more fluid, more social, designed for greater inter-employer serendipity.

Maybe most companies missed the underlying opportunity? Instead of challenging what their own spaces could become, quite a few just rented a WeWork space of their own, hung their logo on the door and assumed the vibe would rub off. Swing and a miss.

The deeper questions about what a space is for, who it serves and how it makes people feel mostly went unresolved. And that’s the bigger risk, really. Not just outsourcing the design, but outsourcing the imagination or responsibility. For physical places still matter because they shape behaviours, communities, cultures … helping to build trust and belonging.

The people, organisations and places that have done this well tend to not have the return to office vs. work from home shouting match happen as much. It’s redundant because you can be in the office a lot, out of the office a lot, at home a bit, and get the job done better.

We don’t entirely agree on whether companies should take a bigger role in reshaping the built environment. There’s reason to be cautious given the history of corporate involvement in public spaces is uneven at best, we give you the advertising led bus shelter for example. When private enterprise moves into the physical realm, it’s easy for commercial interests to overshadow communal ones.

Photo by G-R Mottez on Unsplash

We do both wonder though; if companies don’t step back in, who will?

There are signs of a shift, or at least some weak signals. In the UK there’s John Lewis repurposing department stores, or at least parts of their sites, into housing. Lloyds Banking Group is putting their financial weight behind affordable homes. Small exceptions perhaps, but practical gestures towards making an impact on towns and cities in ways companies have shied away from for a while.

It’s easy to see why the physical has been less attractive, for building has become increasingly harder than coding. It’s slower, messier and subject to more scrutiny in the form of regulations. There aren’t exactly sprints or agile stand-ups for a housing development, and you can’t exactly A/B test a public square.

But perhaps that’s exactly why it’s needed, for you could A/B test investment in the immediate environment of a supermarket for example. If you spent twenty grand making the property around a store more pleasant, perhaps in the form of art, street furniture, greenery, benches, bike storage etc. then will that translate into returns with more people shopping there, spending more, perhaps a reduction in shoplifting?

Behind all the talk of digital disruption and AI powered transformation lies a risk that goes unspoken just now, though the voices are rising. But when the places where people live, work and play end up becoming both more expensive as well as shabbier, that rubs off on how people show up to work as well as how they spend their money. That has implications for the digital world too.

The next frontier of innovation may not be more new apps or platforms, or even the encroachment of existing ones. Instead, it could well be the interface between companies and the world outside the screen.

Our chat barely got us any answers, and we probably didn’t agree on what the futures could look like, or what the right role for business should be. But we did, we think, align on the idea of the screen being full, and the physical world being an area of greater opportunity.