District 2024 Magazine: Changing Real Estate for Collaborative Innovation

Combining our deep expertise in innovation ecosystems and workplaces, Lendlease partnered with WORKTECH ACADEMY in 2019 to Table in the area see how companies collaborate against a backdrop of significant social, economic, environmental and technological change. Five years later, we revisited our findings to see what had changed and how it was affecting real estate.

Key Findings

Since the pandemic, many organizations have rethought the use of real estate, often repurposing or relocating to bring people back to the office to encourage greater collaboration, innovation and testing of new ideas. There has also been a renewed push to improve collaboration with external partners to expand knowledge bases, stimulate innovation and find solutions to future problems. In 2019, we identified three models of innovative workspace:

Innovation laboratories – organizational level model

Shared hubs – network layer model

Innovation District – ecosystem level model

These models will continue to be relevant in 2024, but the accelerating pace of change has resulted in significant evolution for each. This includes reviving innovation labs, expanding partnerships with shared hubs and accelerating the creation of collaborative platforms, with improved placemaking and networking clearly evident in innovation districts such as Stratford.