The JobSync Blog
Open Office, Closed Creativity
January 19, 2012
It’s the stuff of high-tech dreams: An open, collaborative office where innovators brainstorm and create the new technologies of tomorrow. Or a high-octane, open-architecture office where marketing wizards bounce ideas off each other and create an award-winning advertising concept that goes viral on-line.
Human beings are social creatures, as common knowledge would have it, and when we work together, we can achieve anything. Especially in a hip, swanky office where every coworker is just a few feet away in an unsequestered location. But as a New York Times article recently points out, growing research is showing that privacy and freedom from disruption enables people to be more creative.
The article cites research from psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist, who claim that the most creative people are frequently introverts. Such individuals, it is argued, are able to concentrate on tasks at hand. And Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak would he agree. He feels inventors and other creators – regardless of what field they are working in – are actually artists. In his memoir, Wozniak goes on to say, “…artists work best alone.”
So what about the rest of us, and what are the ramifications for hiring for creativity?
Not all of us are introverted groundbreaking artists, yet 70% of us work in open-plan offices. While this may foster a team-oriented atmosphere, its potential for disruptiveness and lower creativity must be considered by company managers. This is often fine for companies where watershed creativity is not the order of the day. But there are many times where a little creativity in securing a client, making a sale, or solving a befuddling work problem would come in handy – is your office helping or hindering such creativity? And if your office is an open office, would hiring an introvert over an extrovert – who are more or less equal in skills and background – make any sense?
Tell us what you think! Is a closed office setting more open to creativity, or is an open office setting more closed to creativity?
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