Why Remote Work Could Lead to Less Innovation

Do chance encounters among employees of different Silicon Valley companies in coffee shops, restaurants and other public places lead to innovation? The answer is yes, say researchers who examined such “knowledge spillovers” in a study that may have implications for today’s work-from-home culture.

The researchers—Keith Chen of the University of California, Los Angeles, and David Atkin and Anton Popov of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—tracked the locations of 425,000 phones using commercially available cellphone-location data. Though the data is anonymous and linked only to the unique ID number of each phone, the researchers surmised where the phone owners worked by looking at where the phones spent large parts of the workday, using a map of buildings occupied by Silicon Valley companies that have filed patents.

Examining instances where phone owners went outside the office and ended up near someone from another Silicon Valley company, they found 218 million episodes in which two workers from different companies were in the same place between September 2016 and November 2017.

For their study, they considered only situations in which both people were near each other for at least a half-hour, and used a probability technique to eliminate meetings that might have been arranged in advance. They also assumed that many of these people bumped into someone they already knew, such as a former colleague.

Sharing knowledge

Such chance meetings “may spark a conversation that leads to a transfer of knowledge or a collaboration,” the researchers wrote.

Next, the research team pulled up patent applications filed by the companies of the employees. Such applications list relevant patents from other companies in so-called patent citations. Patent citations are “one measure of which firms are influencing each other and how firms are sharing ideas,” says Prof. Chen, who studies behavioral economics and strategy at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

The researchers then worked backward in time. They looked for places where employees of a patent-filing company may have crossed paths with workers from companies cited in the patent application.

“We rewind the clock to a year before when they would have been developing this technology,” says Prof. Chen. “What school were they dropping their kids off at, what mall were they shopping at, what bar do they frequent. And you infer who was at that bar when they were there,” based on the phone-location data.

The goal, Prof. Chen says, is “to connect workers of the firm that is going to file the patent, at the establishment where we infer that patent was innovated, with what other workers they were interacting with.”

Next, the researchers calculated the overall number of such citations that appear to have been linked to unplanned encounters. The upshot: The researchers say that without these encounters, there would have been about 8% fewer cross-firm patent citations in the period covered by the phone-location data.

“There is a tremendous correlation between my workers’ meeting a lot with your workers, and my workers’ citing your workers’ patent,” says Prof. Chen.

The innovation boost from the encounters, by the team’s calculations, is about twice as large as a similar effect found by other research that looked for knowledge transfer based on whether two companies’ offices are near each other, Prof. Chen says.

Their study comes with some caveats. The researchers don’t know whether these employees actually spoke when they were in the same location, or, if they spoke, what they talked about. And they don’t know whether the workers’ jobs would have facilitated a tech discussion—they might have involved a Google HR staffer and an Apple maintenance person.

Still, the report shines a light on what some experts have long suspected: that random conversations involving people in similar industries can increase innovation.

Enrico Moretti, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says the study “significantly advances our understanding of knowledge spillovers and how they shape the geography of innovation.” Prof. Moretti, who says he has been working on the topic for 25 years, says, “I find this paper to be one of the most direct and convincing pieces of evidence on this question. It provides important insights into why Silicon Valley-style clusters of innovation exist.”

Remote work’s impact

Though the study involved cellphone data from before Covid, the researchers say it has implications for an era when many people work all or part of the time from home.

The researchers looked at people who occasionally worked from home in the study period, based on where their phones were located during daytime hours, and then at how that affected their probability of attending planned or serendipitous meetings with someone from another company who didn’t work from home, Prof. Chen says.

Looking at two hypothetical companies, the researchers extrapolated that if one-half of employees at each business work from home, their meetings of all types—serendipitous and planned—would fall 35% and patent citations between the companies would decline almost 12%.

“We think this means information exchange between firms is decreasing,” Prof. Chen says. “It is worrying. These businesses co-locate for a reason. If they can’t learn from each other, we think that is a big deal.”

“Presumably,” he adds, “an even bigger effect is the harm that it does to serendipity and flow of information and innovation within the firm.”

You’re oh so busy. You’re on Slack and email and back-to-back Zoom calls , sometimes all at once . Are you actually getting real work done?

Cal Newport doesn’t think so.

“It’s like, wait a second, none of this mattered,” says the Georgetown University computer science professor and crusader for focus in a distracted age.

Newport, 41, says we can accomplish more by shedding the overload. He calls his solution “slow productivity”—and has a book by the same name —a way for high achievers to say yes to fewer things, do them better and even slack off in strategic doses. Top-notch quality is the goal, and frenetic activity the enemy.

This, he told me, is the thing that can save our jobs from AI and layoffs, and even make shareholders happy.

I had questions. Can we really be less is more at work, or have we grown addicted to constantly crossing endless tasks off our to-do lists? What will our bosses think?

After all, so many of us yearn for a burnout cure-all that will preserve our high-achiever status, and this isn’t the first you-can-have-it-all proposition we’ve heard. Champions of the four-day workweek promise we can ditch an entire workday just by working smarter. Remote-work die-hards swear it’s a win for employers and employees. Few dreams are more seductive than bidding goodbye to hustle culture, while still reaping the benefits of said hustle.

Newport acknowledges that saying no to preserve our productivity can be a delicate act. He knows that entrepreneurs have more flexibility, but says those of us who answer to managers can carve this out too. We might even find we have more power and value to our employers.

“You should take that value out for a little bit of a spin,” he suggests. He offers some pointers.

Less is more

The way we work now is a “serious economic drag,” Newport says. Knowledge workers have devolved into a form of productivity that’s more about the vibes—stressed!—than actually making money for the company. Data from Microsoft finds that lots of us spend the equivalent of two workdays a week on meetings and email alone.

One mistake we make, Newport says, is taking on too many projects, then getting bogged down in the administrative overload—talking about the work, coordinating with others—that each requires. Work becomes a string of planning meetings, waiting on someone from another department to give us a go-ahead.

Newport recommends giving priority to a couple projects, then bumping the others to a waiting list in order of importance. Make that list public, say, in a Google doc you share with bosses and colleagues.

“When workloads are obfuscated behind black boxes, it’s just people throwing stuff at each other, it’s very dangerous to say no,” Newport says.

If someone comes to you with more work, have them consider where it should go on your list, Newport says.

When you do say yes, double the estimated timelines you set to complete a project. That’s how long it’ll take to do it well, he says. And try what he calls a “one for you, one for me strategy.” Every time you book an hour-long meeting, block an hour for independent work on your calendar.

Be the one to trust

It’s a foreign and bracing approach for those of us who reflexively say yes to work requests. Newport’s philosophy requires transparency and confidence. Instead of “let me see how fast I can turn that around!”, try, “This request will take six hours. I’ll have that time in three weeks.”

This could be heresy at some companies. The trick is in the delivery, he says. Never make it seem like work tasks are a burden you shouldn’t have to face. Instead, stress that you’re trying to be as effective as you can for the team and the company. Be positive, and deliver on the timelines you promise. You’ll be seen as someone who’s organised and on top of your game.

We think bosses want someone who’s always accessible—fast to respond, fast to jump into action, Newport says. But what bosses really want is to know that a project they hand you will get done.

Bite-size shirking

Quiet quitting permanently is a bad idea, Newport says, but a little bit is good.

Don’t feel guilty, he adds. You’re working under a new, better system. We weren’t meant to work all out , every day, without seasonal shifts and pauses.

Pick a time—say, the month of July—to slow down. Don’t volunteer for extra work. Don’t offer Mondays as a possibility for meetings. Take on an easier project for cover.

He also recommends taking yourself out to a monthly movie during the workday. Say it’s a personal appointment, and enjoy the sense of control and creativity it brings.

You don’t have to nail a manifesto to the wall, he adds, or try to change the whole company culture. Instead, quietly carve out change for yourself.

Coming into your power

The catch: You have to be really good at the part of your job that matters. And you have to get big stuff done. Remember, this is about being a happier high performer, not slacking.

“There’s no hiding,” Newport says.

I suspect this terrifies a lot of people. They’ve gotten good at being always on and typing up yet another meeting agenda. Tackling a major project or goal is often harder, and comes without a guarantee that you’re going to nail it.

Scary or not, real work is becoming imperative. AI is coming for the rote parts of our jobs. Leaders are sussing out the “nonsense” projects and roles in their ranks as they cut jobs, Newport says. No boss wants to be left with a team of people who are aces at responding to emails.

Mastering a valuable skill puts you in control. Newport writes of people who leave corporate America behind and move where they want , working remotely as contractors, charging wild fees for fewer hours of work. The more you shed the work that doesn’t matter, and spend that time getting better at the stuff that does, the more leeway you’ll get.

“The marketplace doesn’t care about your personal interest in slowing down,” Newport writes. “If you want more control over your schedule, you need something to offer in return.”

Figure that puzzle out, and you might just be able to have it all—high achievement, and your sanity.