Working Paper
Companies have been adopting unconventional workspaces—often characterized by bright or odd colored walls, unique light fixtures, unusual office furniture, vibrant artwork, display of atypical non-work-related objects, and casual and playful atmospheres—to foster creativity. Yet, empirical evidence on the causal effect of such unconventional workspaces on creativity has been lacking.
Across four experiments involving a total sample of 1,133 participants, the authors tested the effect of unconventional workspaces on individuals’ divergent thinking—the process of generating many and distinct ideas to solve a given task. Contrary to their initial expectations, the authors found that unconventional workspaces did not always boost divergent thinking and even hindered it. Specifically, unconventional workspaces were harmful when solutions for a divergent task could be readily inspired by the workspace’s features due to cognitive anchoring. Hence, the positive effect of unconventional workspaces was significant only when the potential solutions for the divergent thinking task were unrelated to features of the workspace.
These findings provide important evidence of the causal effects of unconventional workspaces on the process of creativity and highlight crucial boundary conditions for such effects.
