Many early-stage companies with venture capital funding pride themselves currently of having a remote workforce. Not realizing, that during the early stages of building a company, quick collaboration and continuous on-site communications are most important in developing creative strategies and competitive strengths. (see whiteboards)
I can only support these comments ” If you want to encourage radical innovation, you’ve got to bring people together. You cannot just rely on digital infrastructure.” (University of Pittsburgh, Social Scientist Lingfei Wu, recent study in Nature magazine)
I’ve made this discovery, while working remotely, needing to share ideas to build competitive strengths and accelerate the time to customer deployment. It simply takes much longer, and many individuals need more time to understand the changes required, for improved operations.
Given these discoveries, I do have the impression that office space will become a more important consideration to bring creative and intelligent employees and executives together, for continuous and agile communications and better results. As the phrase goes “a good idea may be worth $1 million.”