Corporate Design Foundation strongly believes in the potential of workplace design as a major business resource to foster innovation, encourage collaboration and reinvent organizational culture. Unfortunately, most executives do not realize the potential of workplace design to successful business and there is almost no exposure to this within business education. To address this, Corporate Design Foundation is conducting research with executives, academics and employees to document how design of the workplace contributes to increased business success.

Some of the Foundation's work in this area includes the following:

From 1999-2004, CDF conducted interviews with executives and others from companies that have successfully used workplace design to change their cultures: Alcoa, SEI Investments, Muzak, AllSteel, Tribune Interactive, and Green Mountain Power. This small but growing number of chief executives has used workplace design as the catalyst to reinvent the culture of their organization to be more collaborative, innovative and flexible.

Foundation chairman Peter Lawrence synthesized CDF's research into a course taught to graduate students at the Institute of Design at IIT in March 2004. The course, Workplace and Corporate Culture, (course description)[Link to PDF]examined issues in workplace design in detail and explored approaches to research and document workplace examples.

In 2003, Arnold Wasserman and CDF board member Sara Beckman, professor, Haas School of Business, worked with others to offer the first multidisciplinary course on workplace design, which brought together students and faculty from business, architecture and psychology (course description). [LINK]

Corporate Design Foundation is developing a pilot research program to apply different research methods to document and understand the impact of workplace design on organizations. This program will examine the workplaces of 5-7 companies that have utilized design of the workplace as a means to change organizational culture.

CDF is seeking additional workplace examples and partners interested in supporting and participating in this research. Contact the Foundation at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or 617.350.7097.