The concept of an open office—where executives live and work among the masses—may seem cutting edge, but according to Herman Miller Workplace Strategist Margaret Serrato, the idea is nothing new.

“If you look at images from offices from the 1880s, all the way up through probably 1940, you’ll see that everybody worked out at big tables,” Serrato says. “Some owners would have their own office, but,” Serrato added, “more often they’d simply have a roll-top desk to lock up the payroll at night.”

Why the continued interest in open-office plans? Research shows that locating executives near employees increases daily communication and speeds up the decision making process. The need for formal, time-consuming meetings decreases, and brilliant ideas hatch during cookie breaks, coffee pot chats, and lunchtime conversations. While most offices fall somewhere in the middle on the private-to-open spectrum, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the more open the office, the more collaborative and innovative employees and executives become.

For many technology, social media, and Internet companies, open office plans are integral to strategy. You won’t find their C-suite executives enshrined in inaccessible corner offices, blinds closed and doors locked. Executives are in the trenches, working at multi-person benches alongside everyone else, or even going completely mobile, working from a different location around the office each day. The resulting workplaces breed collaboration, invention, creativity, and fun.

It’s a 50-cent word, but “dematerialization” just might save us millions, to say nothing of our planet. The basic idea is getting down to only what is essential, or, as Charles Eames said in the 1940s, “the best for the most for the least.”

Doing more with less certainly predates Mr. Eames, but dematerialization has had a resurgence lately, largely as a response to conspicuous consumption (McMansion anyone?), a throwaway culture (it’s cheaper to buy a new one than fix the old one), and planned obsolescence (as Annie Leonard says in The Story of Stuff, only 1% of things are still in use 6 months after purchase).

It’s no wonder those concerned about sustainability see promise in dematerialization, an idea whose logic train goes from using less material to eliminating material altogether while still delivering the same level of functionality. An example of this promise they often point to is music delivery. From LPs to cassettes to CDs to digital downloads, the progression eliminated lots of plastic waste and the resources and energy needed to make it. (The sustainability costs of using the Internet to download the music will be left to another discussion.)

We find examples of dematerialization closer to home. One is the Setu chair designed by Studio 7.5 of Berlin, Germany. The chair’s two spines provide tilt-like kinematics in one continuous seat and back, eliminating the need for a tilt mechanism.

Reducing material and actually improving a product’s performance is the theme of another chair, SAYL designed by Yves Béhar. In SAYL’s case, seat base, arm structure, and tilt mechanism undercarriage are fused into one, strong part that reduces material content. The chair’s The Y-Tower structure is sculpted and hollowed out, achieving strength with less material.

Eliminating an object altogether is the logical conclusion of dematerialization. Short of developing a way for people to levitate, we think making every molecule in a chair work harder is an acceptable alternative.

For University of Washington student Erik Alskog, “It’s the students who make campus green.” Busy thinking up new ways to make their school earth friendly, Alskog and his fellow classmates are redefining what it means to be green. They challenge us to imagine bike-powered monorails connecting campus with the surrounding areas where students live; new forms of wind farming that mimic swaying blades grass; and products designed to last a hundred years.

Alskog was one of three winners in our third annual Student Video Contest. We posed the question, “What makes your campus green?,” students everywhere responded, and viewers selected the winners.

Alskog is not alone in thinking of the future; students today see themselves as green innovators working to make their campuses more environmental.

To see some of the other great videos we received, click here.

Herman Miller's new Quilty textile mimics the water and oil repellant properties of a lotus leaf.

Biologist, innovation consultant, and author, Janine Benyus has dedicated her life to the idea that learning from natural models is the best way to achieve sustainable design. Through her Biomimicry Guild, she has inspired companies to look to nature as model, measure, and mentor in the design process.

She has a lot in common with Charles Eames, who said that design “depends largely on constraints.” For Benyus, it’s a matter of the way everything on earth, with the regrettable exception of most humans, learns to live within nature’s limits.

Mimicking nature’s wisdom results in products such as Quilty textile. It uses engineering on the molecular level to mimic the surface of the lotus leaf so that water and oil roll off its surface.

Benyus was recently honored with the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for her pioneering work. Her willingness to learn from the limits nature imposes recalls another Eames statement from nearly 50 years ago: “Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem: the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible and his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints.”

From stone-tipped axes to powerful 3D computer modeling programs, technology has always allowed design to push the boundaries of possibility.

The Atlantic recently included the Herman Miller SAYL chair, designed by Yves Béhar, on their list of designs using new technology to challenge the conventional understanding of how good design looks, feels, and functions. We are in good company. Visit the Atlantic to see the complete list.

What good is a chair with holes? In the case of the Mirra, it’s the holes—567 of them to be exact—that provide the chair’s backrest its characteristic flex.

Envisioning a chair that acts as a second skin, Studio 7.5 designed Mira’s TriFlex back to move with the sitter. They worked with us to design and engineer holes of varying shapes and sizes. It results in the one-piece molded polymer back that has been fine-tuned to create three zones of flexibility. Each zone offers a different level of pliability for proper ergonomic support.

So, while holes in your desk chair are often cause for concern, in the case of Mirra, a back full of holes is a good thing.

Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine, believes it’s because people don’t have time for creativity at work. Chaining yourself to your computer in search of an answer, Lehrer argues, is only going to leave you frustrated. “You may look productive, but you’re actually wasting time.” Instead, he advices “go for a walk. You should play some ping-pong. You should find a way to relax.”

Scientific research backs up Lehrer’s advice, finding that people who are relaxed and in a good mood are more likely to have innovative or creative thoughts. And companies like 3M are taking advantage of this fact. With a track record of innovation, 3M gives every engineer an hour a day to use as he or she likes. Some tackle side projects, while others indulge in a personal hobby. The only catch is that they must share what they pursue during those hours with colleagues.

It worked for Charles Eames and has paid off for 3M. When will more companies realize the creative spark that catches fire may just be an hour away?

The secret? Continual improvement. Using a process we call the Herman Miller Performance System, or HMPS, we compound small, incremental improvements into big change. Rearranging a bin of parts to be six inches closer may only save a half second, but when combined with hundreds of other refinements, the results add up. In fact, they add up to more than 260 seconds—or 4 minutes and 20 seconds—of time saved to make an Aeron chair.

Applying the same problem-solving knowhow to the production of our products as we do their design, Herman Miller remains at the cutting-edge. And while the competition is busy exporting manufacturing jobs, we can proudly say our products are made in the United States.

Checkout this video FastCompany made while visiting us a few weeks ago.

“We have to be incredibly mindful and purposeful with how we use our resources,” says Susan Lyons, Materials Creative Director at Herman Miller. This is a major idea behind sustainable design at Herman Miller—doing more with less material is a constant challenge, but one we’re passionate about. A great example: the Setu chair.

As Lyons explains, Setu’s Kinematic Spine, inspired by the chambered nautilus, uses “structure instead of mass” to create its strength and flexibility. And this sustainable innovation, designed by Studio 7.5, yields a lighter, ready-to-sit chair; with Setu, there’s nothing to tilt or tweak, just immediate comfort.

Economy is one of five material design principles: honesty, utility, economy, pleasure, and possibility.

There is much proof of their successes, including the string of designs they did for Herman Miller, beginning with the groundbreaking plywood chair. But one clinker stands out: their 1976 show for the bicentennial of the American Revolution, “The World of Franklin and Jefferson.” Hilton Kramer writing in the New York Times panned it as overly ideological. Others saw it as overwhelming: too much information, too many artifacts.

But as Donald Albrecht, architecture and design curator, points out in “Eames: The Architect and the Painter,” the exhibit can be seen less as a failure and more as a reflection of the restless minds of the Eameses. Layering the material, as we do today in digital experiences, would have made it compelling and digestible. Perhaps this exhibit was simply another example of Charles and Ray being ahead of their time.

Learning in higher education is becoming less a practice in memorization and regurgitation, and more an active, collaborative, and social process. As a result, a new way of viewing university and college campuses is emerging.

Driven by technology and social networks, the current generation of learners is creating an academic experience that is different than even a few years ago. “Circles of exchange” begins to explain this trend. Campuses are increasingly becoming large networks made up of individual student networks. As students connect with one another, the flow and diversity of information is strengthened, more ideas are shared, more knowledge is developed, and the potential for innovation increases.

The physical environment has a role in this. A thoughtfully designed learning space can be place for students to gather, collaborate, socialize, and exchange ideas. The creation of these spaces requires a better understanding of how and why people learn, the effect of ever greater sources of information, opportunities to customize learning experiences, and anticipation and accommodation of technological change. When understanding about these elements is brought to the design process, the campus will better support the needs of students.

Photo: Lure/Forest by Beili Liu

We believe products like Compass express the empathy we have with caregivers, patients, families, and administrators.

Well, some students are demanding more of their education and universities are stepping up, providing them an opportunity to work outside the traditional parameters of academia. Innovation centers give interdisciplinary teams of students a chance to tackle a project in which they design, fabricate, and test a prototype that solves a particular problem; sometimes in conjunction with for-profit companies.

No specified number of hours, no professor at a podium, no classroom—just a deadline and a problem to be solved. Which raises a problem: Your average classroom is not the highly flexible, dynamic space that will stimulate, support, and contribute to success of the young innovator. But, what is?

Looking to answer this question, Herman Miller convened a Leadership Roundtable to explore the innovation process and develop characteristics of creative spaces. Comprised of university innovation center leaders, national associations tracking educational innovation, and architects and designers, the group focused on several questions:

• What are the characteristics of an innovator?

• What are the barriers to creativity and innovation on campus?

• What attributes of creative environments that make them unique and supportive of the innovative mind?

The answers to these questions all touched on the type of space needed. Innovation centers require spaces that satisfy both the physical and psychological components of innovation. They have to be an ecosystem in which ideas can grow uniquely with each project.

Pictured: Prasad Boradkar, Director of InnovationSpace (a transdisciplinary laboratory at ASU).