Research on what enables innovation tends to focus on either social factors or spatial ones, but not both. This is an interdisciplinary study examining links among spatial layout, social networks, and innovation in a set of highly innovative organizations. The results should have value for those who design spaces for organizations that seek to be innovative as well as for those who manage them. The research team includes experts in architecture, organization sciences, and sociology. As built space structures patterns of circulation, co-presence, co-awareness and encounter in an organization, these interrelationships become fundamental to the development of social networks, especially those networks critical to the innovation process. This study will include an in-depth analysis of space, including its geometric and topological qualities. It will also examine user perceptions of the environmental qualities of space as they relate to innovation. It will also employ theories and methods related to social network analysis to examine the formation and maintenance of crucial social links. The study will include development and testing of new metrics for describing spatial variables pertinent to social phenomena. These will be valuable for other researchers who would like to explore questions related to links among people, spaces, and performance.
