Archives for May 2013

World citizen Uday Dandavate is one chief executive whose company won’t occupy a campus and who would never advise anyone else to build one.

Trained in industrial design at the Ohio State University with a focus on learning methods and tools from psychology, anthropology and communications theory, Dandavate advises corporate America. His clients include Samsung, Microsoft, Motorola, Intel, Honda, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson Controls, Kodak and Pepsi.
SonicRim, his company, helps companies see how workers and customers experience their culture and products. “Whenever our customers want to add something new for their customers or make a workplace experience innovation, they come to us to understand the experience of the target audience, so they can improve the idea,” he said.

Read the rest of the story at The Registry.

As much effort as has been expended to explain the San Francisco workplace revolution, Silicon Valley workspace is in a jumble, too.

Five of the valley’s most important companies have announced large, expensive new campuses. On their face, the decisions—by Apple, Google, Facebook, Nvidia and Samsung—make two statements: Companies don’t expect to abandon Silicon Valley, but the existing workstock does not meet corporate needs.

Silicon Valley with its historic startup and hardware-engineering business culture has specialized in the vanilla office and workplace building. For landlords, the better to usher in the next company when the last one outgrows your space, gets bought or quietly fails. And venture capitalists aren’t interested in financing fancy.

Read the full story at The Registry.