This is an interesting article from Brookings that talks about the "myths of converting offices into housing." What I especially like about the article is that it's nuanced, and it directly addresses many of the myths that currently surround offices. The first one is that "offices are over."
Regular readers of this blog will know that I don't agree with this. And the article provides some good data points to support this:
Office utilization may be below pre-pandemic levels in many cities, but the data suggests that we have not yet hit a plateau. Utilization rates continue to increase, albeit gradually. So if we are to be more precise here, it's not that some people will never return to the office, it's just that it's taking longer than I think many people expected.
That said, this is not the case in all cities. Downtown Salt Lake City,
This is an interesting article from Brookings that talks about the "myths of converting offices into housing." What I especially like about the article is that it's nuanced, and it directly addresses many of the myths that currently surround offices. The first one is that "offices are over."
Regular readers of this blog will know that I don't agree with this. And the article provides some good data points to support this:
Office utilization may be below pre-pandemic levels in many cities, but the data suggests that we have not yet hit a plateau. Utilization rates continue to increase, albeit gradually. So if we are to be more precise here, it's not that some people will never return to the office, it's just that it's taking longer than I think many people expected.
That said, this is not the case in all cities. Downtown Salt Lake City,
as we have talked about before
, is the busiest it has ever been. Similarly, ridership on the Utah Transit Authority network is up 26% from pre-pandemic levels.
Europe is generally ahead of North America with utilization rates in the 70-90% range, according to JLL. And Asia is even further ahead with rates in the 80-110% range. Meaning that, similar to downtown Salt Lake City, there are (many?) cities in Asia where more people are in the office today compared to in 2019.
So I would not be so quick to claim that "offices are over."
Here are two interesting studies that explore the relationship between remote work (distributed teams) and innovation:
This one explores how distributed teams have impacted "disruptive scientific discoveries" from 1961 to 2020. To measure this they look at scientific discoveries that end up becoming widely cited, which they take to mean that the work has supplanted an existing body of knowledge. Here they find that distributed work is inversely correlated with disruptive innovation. It is fine for incremental improvements, but it is less than ideal for new foundational ideas. That said, they do note that new technologies -- stuff like Zoom -- have started to minimize the innovation gap by helping people communicate as if they were co-located.
But stuff like Zoom isn't perfect. The second study looks at the impact of virtual communication on idea generation. And what they find is that videoconferencing is bad for that, largely because it focuses people on a screen and "prompts a narrower cognitive focus." So if your job involves coming up with new ideas, Zoom may not be the best forum for that. But you probably already knew that.
Density, which is a company that provides occupancy-tracking sensors, announced this week that it has just completed a $125 million funding round at a ~$1 billion valuation. This is their Series D. Official announcements,
as we have talked about before
, is the busiest it has ever been. Similarly, ridership on the Utah Transit Authority network is up 26% from pre-pandemic levels.
Europe is generally ahead of North America with utilization rates in the 70-90% range, according to JLL. And Asia is even further ahead with rates in the 80-110% range. Meaning that, similar to downtown Salt Lake City, there are (many?) cities in Asia where more people are in the office today compared to in 2019.
So I would not be so quick to claim that "offices are over."
Here are two interesting studies that explore the relationship between remote work (distributed teams) and innovation:
This one explores how distributed teams have impacted "disruptive scientific discoveries" from 1961 to 2020. To measure this they look at scientific discoveries that end up becoming widely cited, which they take to mean that the work has supplanted an existing body of knowledge. Here they find that distributed work is inversely correlated with disruptive innovation. It is fine for incremental improvements, but it is less than ideal for new foundational ideas. That said, they do note that new technologies -- stuff like Zoom -- have started to minimize the innovation gap by helping people communicate as if they were co-located.
But stuff like Zoom isn't perfect. The second study looks at the impact of virtual communication on idea generation. And what they find is that videoconferencing is bad for that, largely because it focuses people on a screen and "prompts a narrower cognitive focus." So if your job involves coming up with new ideas, Zoom may not be the best forum for that. But you probably already knew that.
Density, which is a company that provides occupancy-tracking sensors, announced this week that it has just completed a $125 million funding round at a ~$1 billion valuation. This is their Series D. Official announcements,
On a practical level, the company provides workplace space analytics. They offer sensors that allow companies to anonymously measure how people are using their offices.
How long people are at their desks for (possibly weird), which conference rooms are most used, where people socialize, and so on. With the idea being that if you measure it, you can then optimize it. It's about how to best use your real estate.
But their overarching mission is "to measure and improve out footprint on the world." Their ambitions seem to go beyond just office space. It's about how we occupy our cities, and using analytics to more efficiently design and build them going forward. And that's pretty interesting.
I'm not intimately familiar with the company, but I thought I would share the news with all of you in case you'd also like to check them out.
On a practical level, the company provides workplace space analytics. They offer sensors that allow companies to anonymously measure how people are using their offices.
How long people are at their desks for (possibly weird), which conference rooms are most used, where people socialize, and so on. With the idea being that if you measure it, you can then optimize it. It's about how to best use your real estate.
But their overarching mission is "to measure and improve out footprint on the world." Their ambitions seem to go beyond just office space. It's about how we occupy our cities, and using analytics to more efficiently design and build them going forward. And that's pretty interesting.
I'm not intimately familiar with the company, but I thought I would share the news with all of you in case you'd also like to check them out.
