Daymond John: Get Out of Your Office and Into the MixThe 'Shark Tank' star shares why it is so important to break down the office walls to open up the communication flow.

Throughout my career, I worked in a traditional workspace. My company had an office, and I had a private office inside it. But when I started seeing businessincubators-- with everyone at a company, from the top to the bottom, out in the open communicating andcollaborating-- I said, "Wow, that's a much better idea." When everyone's behind their closed doors, things are lost in translation. So about two years ago, I moved my staff into anopen floor plan, with me dead in the middle. Then this spring, I made an even larger change. I opened a co-working space for executives and larger corporations calledBlueprint + Co., and moved my staff into it. Now there are no boundaries between my team and others, including staff from Leesa, Ashley Stewart, The Honest Company and Shopify.

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这就是为什么我不只是提倡开放的fice anymore. I'm now advocating for no single, enclosed company office at all. (The exceptions: legal, HR and finance departments, which need walls to contain sensitive discussions and material.) Companies do themselves a disservice by walling off their employees. Traditional offices were designed to house all our bulky fax machines, scanners, phones and other equipment. Now everything is digital; you walk around with a computer in your pocket, and you barely need anything else. And that should free us up to think differently about how and where we work. I now believe a company is only as innovative as its workspace. I see giant corporations desperately asking people like me to come speak to their staff about innovation, but innovation won't actually happen at these places because the old guard are stuck in their corporate offices. They can't see what's going on beyond their own walls. Fifteen years can go by without them learning anything new.