Paying attention to our customers’ working environments has revealed a significant shift: organizations that emphasized individuals and project teams yesterday are increasingly organizing around teams and communities-of-practice today.

A community-of-practice is a group of people who have developed ways of working together that go beyond function. They share a strong social bond, vocabulary and work practices. Their connectedness enables them to deal with complexity quickly and thoroughly. The richness of their interactions can lead to significant innovations and learning.

This insight has led us to offer architects, interior designers and corporate facilities managers an alternative approach to planning working environments, an approach that treats both communities-of-practice and teams as the bases of interior space planning.

We call it “community-based planning.” And we think planners who use it will create environments that make life easier (less “nutsy”) and more productive for people who work on teams and in communities-of-practice.

Community-based planning supports the tacit ways they interact with one another...the informal ways they learn...the unspoken ways they communicate.

It provides tailored team spaces; permits ubiquitous access to technology; and enables community members to retain and retrieve information as they move from place to place.

It also positions Steelcase to offer customers and their architects and interior designers new kinds of products that deliver unprecedented support to users and buyers alike.