The Perfect Tech HQ
If your Internet was on the fritz in River North last week, it was probably because more than 10,000 techies were at Techweek with their bandwidth-gobbling startups. We checked out a pair of presentations that are highly relevant to commercial real estate.
NBBJ managing partner Scott Wyatt has overseen the creation of HQs for companies like Amazon and Google. Tech CEOs have realized that office space (historically an icon of tedium) can be an important business tool in luring top talent, he says. Research confirms that physical structure helps dictate behavior of companies and individuals, Scott says, meaning fewer bored and frustrated employees. While the post-Industrial Revolution application of the production line to white collar jobs completely missed the emotional side of work, and 93% of workers hate Robert Probst’s cubicle, coveted private offices have become a waste of real estate and money, he says.
The solution? Humans have the highest cognitive performance when they are outside, in motion, and there’s a little bit of risk, Scott says. (Eg, the beach, with threat of sunburn on land and sharks in the water.) We can’t literally replicate this indoors, but we can give employees mobility, access to nature (proven to help people heal faster after brain surgery), and enough variety in working environments and public spaces to create serendipitous idea exchange with coworkers. The calorie-burning aspect of moving through the space to connect with others also helps lower stress, Scott says. (Another blow to the telecommuting trend that Marissa Mayer must have seen coming.)
We were shocked to learn that the No. 1 tech priority of the US government is the advancement of manufacturing to create jobs and economic growth, not adding more levels to Candy Crush. Digital Lab for Manufacturing CTO Bill King says the Chicago institute has $320M at its disposal to help accelerate early stage manufacturing technology, funded by the government and private companies like GE and Procter & Gamble. What they’re trying to change: Historically, manufacturing has been a linear, commoditized process of design, make, deliver. Today, material costs are rising, the labor skills gap is growing, and the separation of designers and makers due to outsourcing has noticeably slowed innovation. Factories in 10 years won’t look like the infamous Foxconn facilities (below) that make our smartphones, Bill says.
The assembly line will be taken over by robots, with one person supervising either on-site or miles away via real-time, electronic updates. A digital link between design and fabrication will connect machines, factories, and supply chains, and the data created throughout a product’s lifecycle (from when your Nikes are designed until you toss them in the trash) can finally be used to cut costs and increase revenue for the $3 trillion manufacturing sector. Bill’s most salient takeaway for real estate investors: Factories’ automated future will require access to a highly educated workforce. Most factories are located nowhere near those talent pools, which could mean a mass migration of industrial property to urban centers in the not-so-distant future.
Once we learned how techies work, we figured we should check out how they live and play. Here’s a shot from Friday night at Techweek’s Future Sound Music Festival, where we jammed out to St. Lucia for “research” purposes.
