Google has decided to wind down its “labs”, the section of its operations from whence the experimental, developmental applications, such as GMail, Buzz, Wave and, of course, Google+ emerged. They are planning to do it gently, and some labs such as those for GMail and Calendar will persist, but this could be the end of Google’s adventure in innovating and a knuckling down to its real business, which is not “search” as you may have thought, but selling ads. Google, despite appearances is nothing more than an advertising company.

Anyway, the very existence of Google Labs always reinforced the image of the company as this wild, innovative, offbeat, groovy, hip place to work, what with the staff ball pool and the 20% rule for staff who can head off and do their own thing 12 minutes in every hour. Indeed, it’s always appeared to be part of the culture, that “GooglePlex” space of great office furniture, hot-desking, the ball pool, like I said, chill-out rooms, fitness centers, and experimentation and innovation. Actually, as with Apple and other apparently hipster tech places to work, the vast majority of operations are much more mundane. It’s not all flappifrappilattemoccachocatinos at dawn with a new app every day. More to the point, there is growing evidence that the ‘plexing of the work environment never was the seat of innovation for Google or any other trendy, modern company.

According to Torkild Thanem and Sara Värlander of the Stockholm University School of Business and Stephen Cummings Victoria Management School at the University of Wellington, New Zealand, the idea that open office design that supposedly promotes fun, spontaneity and creativity lead to unintended behavior and actually undermine the kind of creativity it is intended to foster.

The researchers explain how the open-plan office emerged over the past century to allow supervisors to more easily, well supervise, typists and book-keeping assistants. More imaginative open plan emerged later to facilitate discussion between team members and even between teams in different areas of very large offices. The archetype of this is the open nature of an editorial office. Then came the cubicle approach, which was open plan but with barriers between individual desks, this was intended to give each worker privacy but also to ensure they keep their heads down and work. Any heads above the parapets are obviously not working flat out…

There are many variations on the theme of open-plan offices and a whole industry of “office landscaping” exists to allow employers to supposedly get the most out of their staff by controlling the spaces in which they work and the connections individuals can make within that space given the last amount of moving around. One might imagine that IBM, the old tech stalwart would have been exactly the ordered model that the likes of Apple, Google and other upstarts would try to rebel against in establishing their work spaces. And, by reputation they most certainly did buck the trend. Moreover, if those trends were bucked in their offices, then their products too changed entirely our world view of computing, listening to music and finding and handling information. There was even a UK government report that suggested the workplace of the 21st century would be an extension of the home environment, kitted and fitted with our gadgets so that the workplace would be a recreational centre where the line dividing toys and tasks would be so blurred as to be meaningless. We’d work and play at home and play and work at the office. The work-life balance would become irrelevant because work and life would become one.

BS to the googol, of course.

Evidence from the Swedish study suggests that nothing has changed despite the apparent corporate culture of fun, playfulness and creativity. Employees spend just as much of their time as they ever did trying to circumvent the structures imposed on them by their bosses, avoiding surveillance and putting in only as much effort as they personally feel inclined to do. While employers continually reinvent ways to intensify the work and performance of their staff to get the biggest bang for their buck and to find ways to impose the structures, carry out surveillance covertly and squeeze out more effort. Whether the workplace is designed to look like a recreational center with ball pools and flappifrappilattemoccachocatinos is irrelevant.

Torkild Thanem, Sara Värlander, & Stephen Cummings (2011). Open space = open minds? The ambiguities of pro-creative office design Int. J. Work Organisation and Emotion, 4 (1), 78-98

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• An Insider’s Guide To The GooglePlex: 10 Must-Do Recommendations (GOOG) (businessinsider.com)
• Could Google+ Find A Home In The Workplace? [Headlines] (psfk.com)
• Aw, man. I don’t wanna go home. (ask.metafilter.com)
• Say Goodbye to Google Labs (PCWorld.com)