Quick Take: Innovating offices is a B2B opportunity
Can re-designing physical offices help B2B leaders rediscover what it means to help customers in the real world, where people live and work as humans?
Seizing the opportunity to innovate
I’ve been writing a lot recently about the opportunity to innovate distribution’s physical stores to differentiate against disruptors that compete for customers from the virtual world. In this edition, I turn my attention to offices. I was excited to listen to Sandy Speicher, IDEO’s CEO, when I learned she would join The HBR Channel podcast and answer the question, “What is an office, even for now?”
Listening to Speicher chat with the show’s host, Adi Ignatius, I realized that something bigger is afoot. Imagining the future of work is not just about whether or not workers will return to offices or how physical spaces are redesigned for a hybrid workforce. For B2B innovators, the question of offices and how work is done is an opportunity to engage customers and value chain partners in a timely and consequential question. By doing so, B2B companies will learn new things, offer new ideas, and perhaps gain new insights for innovative customer experiences.
Here are my takeaways from the podcast episode. These are my words, inspired by Speicher and Ignatius, and offered as a Quick Take for your consideration:
Innovating offices is a B2B real-world opportunity. I believe that the ultimate purpose of a B2B company is to help us all live our lives and do our work. If so, then designing spaces for how we work is an opportunity for B2B innovation. More than that, designing spaces is a rare opportunity for collaborating with customers, because every business—customer, intermediary, and producer—is exploring the future of work in physical spaces.
People need each other, and relationships matter. The pandemic has focused on human wants and needs as a very human crisis. Yes, virtual shopping and conferences are essential. And massive layoffs were avoided because many leaders and workers could work at home. But at its heart, B2B innovation is about doing business as humans for humans, and B2B’s most potent innovations build business relationships as they improve customer services and experiences.
Physical spaces must be optimized for meaningful moments when people are together. One leader I know made a list of meaningful moments and then thought about how office spaces might be reconfigured to optimize those moments. Every company’s meaningful moments are different because every company’s culture is unique. It’s too early to copy best practices, and now is a time for experimentation.
Workspaces may be reimagined as labs. A lab is a space designed for experiments, teaching, testing, research, or production. Leaders can look at the work done in cube farms, identify which activities belong in a lab, and then redesign the space to encourage collaboration and purposeful outcomes. B2B innovators can think beyond employees and add customers, vendors, educators, and partners to the people working in a lab. In this way, innovation is integrated into business processes as spaces become labs.
The pandemic’s impact is a recognition of the systems within which we live and work. For redefining how and where work is done, thinking in systems may create breakthrough solutions. In B2B, a system includes the principles, procedures, activities, decisions, measures, resources, assets, and more that define how business gets done. By mapping systems and customer journeys, the inherently collaborative work of B2B suppliers, intermediaries, and customers can be mapped across new spaces redesigned to optimize system performance.
Leaders, managers, and workers are negotiating. Workers want agency and flexibility. Employers wish to strengthen their culture and achieve results. A critical insight for B2B innovators is that if your customers’ leaders, managers, and workers are negotiating how and where work is done, you should join in the conversation to learn and offer your spaces as part of the solution.
Your take?
I’ve written about innovating B2B’s physical stores here and here. In discussions with readers, I have found broad acceptance that the future of office spaces is evolving, but only limited notions of opportunities for B2B innovations. Do Speicher’s insights and my takeaways move your needle? Are you thinking in different directions? Please share your comments below or reach me at mark.dancer@n4bi.com.