The Innovation Formula

CHAPTER 14 PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT Turning up the background noise, and other strategies for enhancing innovation

Not many companies agonise over their physical environment the way Circus Oz does. The design of its new office and rehearsal space in the edgy Melbourne suburb of Collingwood was a ten-year process. And when you walk in, you get the sense that it was all worth it.

Many of the decisions in creating the new space were based on how the company could increase collaboration. Circus Oz's previous home was an old heritage-listed post office and an old heritage-listed Navy drill hall that happened to be adjoining. The buildings were connected by a little corridor and tiny courtyard where the bins were kept. The performers kept to the rehearsal space in the Navy drill hall and the office staff stayed in the post office. Rather than encourage collaboration and innovation, the space inhibited it.

In direct contrast, the new space is built around a huge central rehearsal space that breeds collaboration. Every workstation is no more than 4 metres from a window that looks onto the main rehearsal space. ‘It means that everyone from finance and marketing, through to the receptionist, can stand up from their desk and just take two or three steps and look through a glass window and go, “Oh, right. That's what they're working on today”', explains Mike Finch, artistic director and joint CEO. ‘And we deliberately didn't completely soundproof the rehearsal space, because we wanted people ...