“L’Obs” explores the world of tomorrow through conferences organized throughout France. While respecting barrier gestures, our journalists will interview the most in-depth experts on the company in 2049 on Thursday, October 15, at the Liberté Living Lab, 9 rue d’Alexandrie, Paris 2nd arrondissement. You can register by clicking below:
What will the business look like in 30 years? Register for our evening on October 15 in Paris
Before the coronavirus, teleworking or videoconferencing sounded like swear words in the ears of many of us. Confinement requires, employers and employees have started. Today we have to admit it: it works, even if many business leaders are tempted to ring the end of recess, worried about a lack of team cohesion and, above all, a hypothetical lack of productivity.
Do you want to work?
However, recent experience has already transformed the business world with a change in the way we understand space and contacts at work, as we discover in the video below.
Of course, nothing has been reinvented since the Covid. Changes were already taking place in companies that observe a changing society, as is the case for the architectural firm Projective, which designs workspaces.
As Jérôme Galletti, founder of the agency explains, the epidemic has only given a tremendous boost to these changes, marking “The transition from the information society to the innovation society”.
Some adore it, others loathe it: this teleworking which is not unanimous
The innovation company
“In the information society, our “job” is very conformist: the procedures are applied without much latitude. The innovation company, on the other hand, calls on all the cognitive aspects of the brain: creativity, collective intelligence, sharing, hybridization… This process of innovation creates, little by little, more pleasure . “ details the businessman.
To support the transformation of this company “Conformist, standardized” to a company “Much freer, much more agile, much more creative”, the agency leads by example.
Projective designs new workspaces that promote new ways of working.
Its employees work (and for a long time) “Anytime, anywhere”, defends the CEO. Anytime anywhere.
“Instead of wasting two hours in transport, I encourage my employees to work wherever they are: at home, with customers, in a waiting room or on a train. This is called opportunity remote work. “
The main gain from this connected work? The productivity.
The connector
But for this ” anywhere anytime “ works, it is necessary to keep a place to meet. This space makes it possible to develop a common vision, to learn and to “interface” with each other. This office of the future is “the connector”. In 2049, the workspace will not be a place of production, but of creativity.
Jérôme Galletti presents a model in the premises of the Projective agency.
“We do ideation, hybridization, co-creation, we make decisions and then we propel the ideas, that is to say we present them, we try to put it into practice , to prototype them. In this office of the future, collective intelligence reigns. “
Co-creation
And we no longer speak of design but of co-creation. To achieve the ideal workspace in a company, the agency has long delegated a good part of its work to those who will be the first users:
“We realized very quickly that ourselves, when we were trying to design our clients’ work environments, it was subject to multiple modifications and, in the end, the user was never very happy. We therefore took a step back by leaving creation to the users and by becoming, us, the facilitators. This movement was not easy to operate, because at the beginning, the user tends to redo what he already knows. We realized that we had to start with a step of shifting, of stimulation. We make them visit places that can inspire them. “
The Projective agency has made co-creation its trademark.
“And suddenly the change gets sexy. The user evolves. He is no longer in hindsight but in action. He projects himself and becomes a creator. “
The co-creation of the work environment thus makes it possible to integrate the visions of many people. Projective can involve up to 300 employees for a space that will accommodate 700. When users come to the place, they can say to themselves “oh yes, that’s me who did that. “
A joy for Jérôme Galletti:
“Usually, criticism is directed at architects, who are never there to defend their design. There, the person in charge of a bad arrangement maybe a neighbor of office. It is practical to exchange, to explain. Thus, they take ownership of their environment and change. “
So you need a suitable space, of course, but also suitable tools. Jérôme Galletti who, in the agency, spends his time moving from one office to another is convinced: in the workspace, all the objects will be revisited, starting with his thermos of coffee that he is looking for. All the time :
“We imagine that the thermos of tomorrow will be geolocated. And then it can be autonomous, that is to say it can produce electricity, it could keep the heat. Once it produced the electricity, it could store it in a battery. Once it has stored it in a battery, it can keep your thermos hot or cold for 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours… It can give you the temperature in the thermos, it can tell you, be careful, this isn’t your thermos as you grab it. “
The digitalist
Humans adapt, evolve. He demonstrated this during the weeks of confinement. Jérôme Galletti is already looking much further. Its next thermos is the best proof of this, we are entering the digital era.
Humans have more and more tools to connect to their enlarged brain.
“Yesterday, we had the Sapiens. I am an original Sapiens. But now, like most of us, I’m evolving into a hybrid species. I am biological, but in my pocket I have a little plastic part, part electronic, part miscellaneous, and this part allows me to connect to my extended brain. When I connect to it, I expand my memory. And since there is a lot of information in my extended memory, I have some algorithms that are going to work for me and that are going to do the work that the neurons in my original body do. My memory isn’t very far from an iPad or something like that, but the sum of the data centers that I have access to with my smartphone, I can’t even compare it with the size of my brain. In fact, we are changing species in a very, very important way. And at the same time that we are changing species, all our expectations, whether vis-à-vis work, leisure or information, all these expectations are also changing and to be disrupted. “
