As companies continue to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of remote work, a study of how knowledge flows among academic researchers by Karim Lakhani, Eamon Duede, and colleagues offers lessons for hybrid workplaces. Does in-person work provide more opportunities for innovation than people realize?
Leaders have fretted since COVID-19 lockdowns that collaboration and innovation might suffer when teammates interact less. New research points to an emerging concern four years on, as organizations settle into remote, hybrid, and in-person configurations: Potentially fewer opportunities for vital knowledge sharing outside one’s core department.
That is one implication of a new study about how knowledge is shared that focuses on academia, but may offer lessons for technology, pharmaceutical development, and other STEM industries. In-person interactions with diverse intellectual viewpoints in classrooms, labs, dining halls, and elsewhere on campuses have a unique influence on the course of scientific research, according to the study, coauthored by Eamon Duede, a postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard, and Karim Lakhani, the Dorothy & Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
This article was provided with permission from Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.