Michael Arndt gave an interview at the recent Cinequest festival in San Jose. He's the guy who wrote "Little Miss Sunshine" and now works at Pixar on the next Toy Story.
The most interesting thing he said about Pixar was how they have a rigorous testing process where they go through years of test, edit, shoot (generate) iterations. It sounded like agile development applied to movie making, which is only possible because Pixar does animation and reshoots are only limited by money. Real-life shoots aren't as amenable to long iterative shooting schedules because actors move on to other gigs or physically change.
"[Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company."
There was a similar design criterion for the Clark Center (http://www.stanford.edu/home/welcome/campus/clark.html). The only staircases are wide ones on the outside that maximize chances of people running into each other, as does the single restroom per section. And then there's the coffee shop on the 3rd floor.
Software developers, on the other hand, might want an opposite environment so they don't get distracted with random encounters.
Are you kidding? I'd love an environment like that, as long as I had a little cave to retreat to. Knowing your coworkers casually is the best way to increase communication bandwidth at work.
When I said software developers might want the opposite, I didn't mean that they want crappy work spaces :) I meant an architecture built for increased contacts means you don't have a cave from distractions. Many walls are glass at Clark. If you go to the bathroom or down the stairs or to get a coffee, the chances increase you'll run into others, even if you want to remain fixated on a program. It's whether the workplace maximizes cross-talk for innovation vs focus on implementation. Yeah, ideally you'd want both in the same workplace. A coworker at Clark purposely created his cave by asking for a "worse" spot. I could be convinced it's better to build the workspace for cross-talk and leave it to people to make their own caves.
Michael Arndt gave an interview at the recent Cinequest festival in San Jose. He's the guy who wrote "Little Miss Sunshine" and now works at Pixar on the next Toy Story.
The most interesting thing he said about Pixar was how they have a rigorous testing process where they go through years of test, edit, shoot (generate) iterations. It sounded like agile development applied to movie making, which is only possible because Pixar does animation and reshoots are only limited by money. Real-life shoots aren't as amenable to long iterative shooting schedules because actors move on to other gigs or physically change.
"[Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company."
There was a similar design criterion for the Clark Center (http://www.stanford.edu/home/welcome/campus/clark.html). The only staircases are wide ones on the outside that maximize chances of people running into each other, as does the single restroom per section. And then there's the coffee shop on the 3rd floor.
Software developers, on the other hand, might want an opposite environment so they don't get distracted with random encounters.