A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Claudia Erni Baumann, Frank Zoller and Roman Boutellier
Another important factor, albeit one which has a subordinate role in influencing the number of encounters,
is the physical proximity to other researchers and companies. Physical proximity affects encounters
between people who do not know each other. Between people who know each other, physical
proximity seems to be less important. Here IT is the sphere of interaction in which most of the chance
encounters take place. This sphere of interaction is subject to continuous change. What, though, is
the quality of the chance encounters in this sphere? Preliminary results suggest that chance encounters
in the IT sphere are good for transmitting simple knowledge and for sustaining relationships.
6. Conclusion: Encounters can be managed!
In conclusion, we can say that companies who actively want to support the generation of new ideas
must give their employees opportunities to forge new relationships and to strengthen old ones, to
achieve a balance between weak and strong relationships. By consciously designing and creating
spheres of interaction, chance encounters can be instigated, and these are important for forging new
contacts and deepening existing ones. Even minor changes to a specific sphere of interaction can influence
other spheres of interaction as well as potential conversation partners: the design of a sphere
of interaction always has an effect on encounters. However, for a work environment to be inspiring,
there also needs to be places to which the employees can withdraw from everyone else in order to
work in self-chosen solitude.
If companies want to increase the number of chance encounters and the number of new relationships,
other opportunities besides the architecture and the design of workplace must be made available. As
shown in our study, there is still potential for more chance encounters to be instigated in the sphere of
Organization and Processes (Figure 1). One beneficial way of doing so would be by organizing events
in which many diverse people from different teams, departments, or even people from outside of the
company, can participate.
By consciously designing and creating the different spheres of interaction, Pharma Inc. is turning their
vision into reality, namely that of creating a campus where the employees can meet, talk and exchange
ideas. The office area was envisaged to increase the communication between researchers in
the different research groups. The work flow process and the architecture of the building were constructed
in such a way as to encourage and stimulate encounters with people outside of one’s own
research team. The structure of the campus makes it possible for the employees to meet people who
are not directly relevant to their work. By integrating new types of technology in the workspace, better
communication between colleagues and strangers can be achieved.
This paper contributes to the existing literature on spheres of interaction: the design of these spheres
has an impact on communication patterns and (chance) encounters among employees. Furthermore,
this paper quantifies the importance of the different spheres of interaction. In addition, it could be
shown that chance encounters and face-to-face conversations seem to be of higher importance for
employees who work less than 100m apart.
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