The Organization and Architecture of Innovation

by Thomas J. Allen

Building on his pioneering work on the management of technology and innovation in his first book, Managing the Flow of Technology, Thomas J. Allen of MIT has joined with award-winning German architect Gunter Henn of HENN Architekten to produce a book that explores the combined use of two management tools to make the innovation process most organizational structure and physical space. They present research demonstrating how organizational structure and physical space each affect communication among people—in this case, engineers, scientists, and others in technical organizations—and they illustrate how organizations can transform both to increase the transfer of technical knowledge and maximize the “communication for inspiration” that is central to the innovation process. Allen and Henn illustrate their points with discussions of well-known buildings around the world, including Audi’s corporate headquarters, Steelcase’s corporate design center, and the Corning Glass Becker building, as well as several of Gunter Henn’s own projects, including the Skoda automotive factory in the Czech Republic and the Faculty for Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Munich. Allen and Henn then demonstrate the principles developed in their work by discussing in detail one example in which organizational structure and physical space were combined successfully to promote innovation with impressive HENN Architekten’s Project House for the BMW Group Research and Innovation Centre in Munich, cited by Business Week (April 24, 2006) in naming BMW one of the world’s most innovative companies.

Professor Thomas Allen is the originator of the Allen curve. In the late 1970s, Tom Allen undertook a project to determine how the distance between engineers’ offices coincided with the level of regular technical communication between them. The results of that research, now known as the Allen Curve, revealed a distinct correlation between distance and frequency of communication (i.e. the more distance there is between people — 50 meters or more to be exact — the less they will communicate). This principle has been incorporated into forward-thinking commercial design ever since, in, for example, The Decker Engineering Building in New York, the Steelcase Corporate Development Center in Michigan, and BMW’s Research Center in Germany.

Genres: Business

147 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 19, 2006

About the author

Thomas J. Allen (1931- )

Reviews

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a lovely extended essay on the interplay between formal organization, architecture and communication, and hence into innovation. Allen and Henn argue that there are 3 core types of communication: for coordination, for information, and for inspiration. Arguing that innovation is a fundamentally recombinant process, they stress that managers should consider designs that emphasize the possibility of happenstance communication for inspiration. The authors argue persuasively that many managers have neglected the possibility of using space and architecture as a way of shaping the possibility of interaction.

The essay is not without its limitations. It relies heavily on assertion, and I sometimes wondered how much data there was to support some often bold assertions. While the authors acknowledge a need to balance between communication (social) and concentration (individual) in the production of knowledge, they offer little guidance as to how one manages that mix, nor how one attempts to identify the right (or a better) mix. Still, these feel like quibbles. The core ideas are lucidly and beautifully developed, and strikingly provocative.

[John Barnard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly common sense, but need this kind of evidence-based reminder in the digital age when we think we are connected, but are not. Proximity and face to face still reigns supreme when meaningful connections are important.

[Alberto Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professor Allen is as insightful as it gets. A very interesting book