The coffee shop has almost a cliche’d place in tech folklore. Indeed, it’s hard to go into a cafe these days without seeing an army of laptop wielding people tapping away.
I wrote a few years ago about a study into noise, which found that the kind of hubub you generally find in a cafe (albeit one where people are talking rather than silently working presumably), is actually perfect for creativity.
It led to the creation of the Coffitivity service which will stream the sound of a coffee shop direct to your computer.
Internal and open innovation
All of which is interesting. A similarly interesting trend is the opening up of workplaces to non-employees. I’ve written previously about ventures such as TechShop, whereby Ford engineers are encouraged to tinker alongside external folks in the hope that serendipitous innovation will emerge.
Google have followed suit with their Campus London project, which provides a range of co-working spaces (and yes, a cafe) for entrepreneurs from across the capital to come and hang out.
So it’s interesting to see a recent venture from German software company SAP attempt to combine the two things.
It’s announced the opening of a new cafe in Palo Alto that is a stones throw from the likes of Facebook, HP and Stanford University.
The project is interesting in that it is a standalone project and not confined to SAP employees or customers. The HanaHaus cafe is designed for anyone wanting to enjoy good coffee in a collaborative and entrepreneurial environment.
It will be interesting to see whether SAP tap into the community that they hope to emerge around the cafe. The facility has an auditorium and rentable work space for people who wish to book space for a longer period of time.
There are also plans to have SAP engineers frequent the facility to offer advice and support for the patrons.
The cafe is purposefully SAP free when it comes to branding, with the HanaHaus completely free of any logos or livery from the company, although of course the name is inspired by their HANA database product.
Whilst it’s unlikely that the Haus will facilitate an innovation revolution at the company, it may help them to make friends in the Palo Alto community. From there, who knows where things may lead.
Interesting idea. I can't really see how these things will benefit SAP though. Seems a pretty long shot to me.
That's interesting – I've often felt that I seem to be able to work quite happily anywhere, regardless of whatever is going on. Sure, it can be distracting sometimes but I never feel it is too much of a problem. I'd not heard of Campus London, but do know of a semi-open office not far from me. It's a building with about half a dozen offices, each with their own separate lock and key, but with communal lounge / coffee area, and often a general open door policy. They're all very different businesses (one in marketing, another in book publishing, etc.) but I think they do sometimes find cross-overs in what they do. Will be interesting to see how HanaHaus unfolds.
Yes, it's interesting because most co-working spaces charge you a membership fee, but this is just like a cafe as far as I can tell, so it'd be free to use. I'm often curious just how beneficial such environments are in terms of the kind of serendipitous encounters they aim to promote.
I really like this idea! There is never enough room at Starbucks when I want to go be in the middle of the "white noise". I do my best work on an airplane. If only they had a cafe with that atmosphere, I'd move right next door! 🙂
Funnily enough, I was writing about a study into this recently (about working on the move). Amazingly a large number of people seem to work in motorway service stations, as in the car park sat in their car. I couldn't help but find that incredibly depressing. Trains and planes are great places to catch up on some reading though. No web based distractions.