September/October 2017

Communities: Industry
Closeness Makes a Team Grow Stronger

Proximity in the workplace can help increase collaboration among academics, according to a new study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Researchers found that face-to-face interaction among colleagues and shared spaces created “cross-disciplinary and interdepartmental collaboration.”

The study examined 40,358 papers and 2,350 patents from MIT research from 2004 to 2014. The report revealed that researchers working on papers were more than three times as likely to collaborate when they were in the same workspace. They discovered that collaboration levels fell when the subjects were 400 meters apart, and fell even further when spaced 800 meters apart.

There was a similar trend when it came to patent collaboration among colleagues. Researchers were twice as likely to collaborate when working in the same workspace than those 400 meters apart; collaboration was cut in half again at 1,600 meters apart.

“Intuitively, there is a connection between space and collaboration,” says Matthew Claudel, lead author of the study. “That is, you have better chance of meeting someone, connecting, and working together if you are close by spatially.”