Scenario Planning for Future Workspaces: Mobile and Collaborative Working Environments

Mobile and collaborative technologies can play a crucial role in order to increase communication among workers, organize work more efficiently and reduce process cost. Mobile technologies now already support many forms of individual working, and penetration of these technologies is considerable, Traditional views on mobile working are confined to supporting the mobility of individual workers in order to increase individual productivity. This perspective should be broadened to include the mobility of the workplace and mobility of the work as well as in the view of improving collaboration among individual workers in order to increase inter-personal productivity and to stimulate creativity and innovation. The vision is that the workplace enables work to be carried out where and when it is found beneficial for the individual workers and for the ollaborating groups or communities of workers, and to that end the workplace infrastructure must adapt to the demands of collaborating people. Regarding new vision, and assessing of current practices and ongoing trends, we present six scenarios to explore the key driving forces underlying mobile workplace innovation, to investigate different directions of innovation in mobile workplaces and to prepare for developing a general roadmap. These scenarios are structured along two driving forces, each having two extreme outcomes, 1) human attitude, and 2) Organizational development. The objective of these scenarios is not to represent business opportunities, but to challenge existing frames of mind in envisaging different types of workplaces than those that are already existing, and to show plausible future directions and business cases and to identify enabling technologies and arrangements. Thus, the scenarios provide a framework for exploring strategic challenges concerning mobile and collaborative workplace innovations.