Part IV: The Opportunity
Many companies employ complex systems to design the space and manage the processes by which individuals and teams conduct the transactional or repetitive design work of the firm. And some provide advanced tools for use at the senior management level.

Individuals other than senior managers typically rely upon the meeting rooms as crucibles for generating creative solutions to complex challenges. The prodigious creative powers of the human mind mask the handicap that traditional offices create for knowledge workers. There’s nothing wrong with having meeting space, but whereas many companies differentiate themselves by their processes, factory and plant designs, products and brands, their work spaces remain relatively uniform. If the metaphor for knowledge work in the 21st century is an organic one that thrives on the unsettled edge of chaos, it remains unacknowledged in most corporate office designs. If creative thinking and strategizing are indeed crucial to the continued success of a company, and if the physical environment plays any role at all, is it then not reasonable for an organization to seek a competitive advantage in the way that its associates create, strategize and learn? And is the built environment mute on this issue, or can it play a larger role? Can a space incite and support the need to create? Can it provide a refuge that systematically cultivates individual and collective insight?

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