Gartner's trends for the office of the future:
1. De-routinization of Work
2. Work Swarms
3. Weak Links
4. Working With the Collective
5. Work Sketch-Ups
6. Spontaneous Work
7. Simulation and Experimentation
8. Pattern Sensitivity
9. Hyperconnected
10. My Place
Here is a great summary of their conclusions by Phil Wainewright.
So, why is this important to the Future of Collaboration? As Seth Godin says...
150 years later, why go to work in an office/plant/factory?
1. That's where the machines are.
2. That's where the items I need to work on are.
3. The boss needs to keep tabs on my productivity.
4. There are important meetings to go to.
5. It's a source of energy.
6. The people I collaborate with all day are there.
7. I need someplace to go.
But...
1. If you have a laptop, you probably have the machine already, in your house.
2. If you do work with a keyboard and a mouse, the items you need to work on are on your laptop, not in the office.
3. The boss can easily keep tabs on productivity digitally.
4. How many meetings are important? If you didn't go, what would happen?
5. You can get energy from people other than those in the same company.
6. Of the 100 people in your office, how many do you collaborate with daily?
7. So go someplace. But it doesn't have to be to your office.
Then again, there is always Texai:
But when you break it all down, it comes back to your ability to collaborate well together. Which means you need a process. So the office of the future isn't about all of this technology and theories but fundamentally changing the way we approach problems. This is tough to put into words, so check out the mind map of people and companies that are taking smart processes and applying them to the way we work for dramatically better results.