The real reason proximity leads to innovation

There’s been a lot of discussion on the impact of remote work on innovation. Businesses are understandably nervous that it will reduce collaboration and cross-pollination. In fact, collaborating with your co-workers doesn’t seem to be the issue.
Innovation researcher Matt Clancy analyses the available evidence, summarising it like this:

“Being close seems to be very important for initiating and consolidating new relationships, but once they’re formed it’s no longer so important that you stay physically close – at least from the perspective of facilitating innovation. [...] Once a relationship is formed, it remains pretty productive even after you get subsequently separated, in the sense that you can still collaborate well or at least learn from each other.”

Innovation is more likely to happen in cities than in rural or remote communities, but that is because living in cities gives us vastly more neighbours, allowing us to easily and ‘randomly’ meet other innovators and have serendipitous introductions.

This article explores why this happens and the ramifications of this new era, when being physically close to one another doesn’t feel as important as it did 12 months ago.