Published on
Updated
Reading 2 min.
The practice of teleworking is debated in many companies. Employees favor remote working, while managers are concerned about the repercussions of this mode of organization on the company’s activity and culture. A study, published in the journal Nature, weighs the pros and cons and affirms that teleworking harms innovation.
Researchers from the universities of Pittsburgh and Oxford arrived at this conclusion after analyzing more than twenty million scientific works and four million patents filed between 1960 and 2020. These documents, as old as they are, show that collaborative work remotely has become more popular over the years. Thus, some of the articles studied were written by scientists separated by some 1000 kilometers. For patents, these distances vary between 250 and 750 kilometers.
If remote collaboration is the norm, this mode of organization seems to harm innovation. Indeed, the authors of the study found that researchers working remotely devoted more time to technical tasks (carrying out experiments, data analysis, etc.) than to conceptual ones. As a result, they tended to come up with less innovative ideas than those who could exchange face-to-face.
Scientific teams whose members lived in the same city had a 22% greater chance of producing innovative patents than those whose participants were separated by several hundred kilometers, according to Business Insider. This figure increases to 27% for innovative articles.
When it comes to innovation, IRL wins
This shows how our ability to innovate is impacted by distance. “This is because geographic proximity breaks down hierarchy, allows for flat team structures and in-depth communication, which is essential for conceiving revolutionary ideas. It is easier, for example, for a graduate student to chat informally with a senior professor in a hallway than over email.“, explains Professor Lingfei Wu, one of the authors of the study, in a statement.
We might think that new technologies (videoconferencing software, artificial intelligence, etc.) compensate for this phenomenon, but it would be wrong to say that technical progress alone stimulates innovation. “The IT revolution and the rise of the Internet have made it possible to connect talents from all over the world. Yet studies have shown that innovation breakthrough is in decline, instead of accelerating as many predicted. Our study provides an explanation for this phenomenon: while remote collaboration via the Web helps bring diverse groups of talents together, it also makes it more difficult for their ideas to coalesce.“, says Professor Carl Benedikt Frey, co-author of the study, in the same press release.
The conclusions of this study have important political implications. Indeed, the generalization of teleworking could limit our opportunities to think differently and imagine solutions that disrupt pre-established patterns. But it is illusory to think that face-to-face is the key to more innovation. Companies must above all ensure that they build work environments where employees can listen to each other, exchange ideas and fully embrace their points of view to become innovative.
Slide: 11 tips for optimizing your teleworking