Earlier this year I submitted a proposal to the Graham Foundation for a Research and Development 2009 Grant.

Last week I found out it was not accepted for the final review. Understandable and expected. But since the proposal was about workspaces, a repeated topic of mine, I decided to share the full proposal, reprinted below.

Workspaces: How We Work and Our Changing Workspaces

Abstract
How, when, where and why we work is changing around the world and is directly impacting our use and design of our private and public workspaces. Globalization and changes in computing and communications technology are creating cultural and physical shifts within and across cultures around the world. Traditional cultural expectations of work are changing as globalization increases the spread of information, business and cultural values across nations and people. At the same time, cultures are adapting to new communications technology to use our new-found independence, mobility and flexibility to re-create our workspaces: at home, in public spaces or in non-traditional co-working establishments. As we change how and where we work, we adapt our behavior to the spaces we choose to work and also force these spaces to rethink how their design and environment fits new forms of work.

Goals
How, when, where and why we work is changing around the world and is directly impacting our use and design of our private and public workspaces. As we change how and where we work, we adapt our behavior to the spaces we choose to work and also force these spaces to rethink how their design and environment fits new forms of work.

The key goals are to:

• Identify cross-cultural and national changes in how people work and use private and public spaces to work
• Understand how the availability, layout and infrastructure of private and public workspaces impact how people work
• Research potential trends or opportunities for designers and builders of workspaces to stay abreast with technological and cultural changes

What questions do we need to ask to complete those goals? To start:

• What public spaces do we adopt as workspaces, and how does our use alter the social and commercial natures of the spaces?
• How does the design of public spaces facilitate and empower “public work”?
• How do we adapt our personal and traditional office workspaces to fit our preferences, and how does it impact our performance?
• How do business cultures adapt to employees, clients and business engagements “leaving the office”?
• Will the designs and key features of office spaces creep into public commercial spaces?
• Will public spaces invest in services traditionally delivered by dedicated offices? (e.g. wireless Internet access, private meeting spaces, telephone answering or assistant services, security)
• How do public spaces segment “public workers” from “public socializers”?

Significance
We are at the early stages of understanding the shifting nature of work and its complete impact on our culture. Technology changes faster than people change; our environment shifts faster than we are able to adapt. We have even less understanding of how changes spread across cultures; technological changes occur at different speeds and take vastly different evolution and adoption paths in different nations, and yet multi-national companies and cross-border business partners and clients expect people to change to meet the new global standard. We need to understand how our cultures and our spaces need to change to meet the changing expectations of how, when and where we work.

Contribution
Throughout the process of change we make decisions about our infrastructure and design of our private and public spaces with an “in-between” set of knowledge, exposed to the scope of cultural and technological change but unaware and of its potential. Creating a better understanding of how we can design our private and public spaces to integrate the changing nature of work is critical for us to enhance our lives, improve productivity and create better relationships with our environments.

Without this understanding we base our infrastructure investment decisions on the past instead of the future. Researching, understanding and spreading the key insights of the intersecting trends in how work is done and where work is done will inform a wide range of decisions in designing and using workspaces.