Since the global financial collapse I have seen a worrying trend in big business to centralise and reduce resource, designers are pulled together into regional pockets, sales teams become call centres and some skills are simply lost.

I recently read a piece from Twitter suggesting that the more you centralise the less successful any process becomes; in the piece it was demonstrated that teams of people with varying skill sets working in the same building achieved greater productivity than those within a region, so with the increasing trend to pull similar skills together I started to worry that this was destroying the chance to do our best as teams.

Let me explain, I am a designer, a creative technical mind that can produce my own designs and theories while at the same time being equally capable of bringing the ideas of others to life.  Personally, I feed from other colleagues no matter who they are; I know I am only as good as my ideas and my ideas can be constrained by my own capabilities and creative boundaries, so being able to discuss any project with others helps to free me from those constraints and improve any concepts I may already have.

This can only be done by surrounding people like myself with colleagues who have completely different skill sets, yet this is where the problem starts. Slowly but surely teams of differently skilled individuals are being removed and replaced by teams of similarly skilled individuals, these skilled teams are then all based in one place and can no longer communicate easily in a face-to-face environment with other sections of the business. Instead a meeting takes place in a conference call or emails are cascaded around to gauge opinion, any ideas put forward by others can then easily be disregarded and pushed aside during the creative process.

The popular music industry is a prime example of the separation that is happening everywhere.  Collaborating musicians never meet, the mixing is done by a team in one place while the instruments are recorded elsewhere.  This in my opinion has led to a music industry that really hasn’t managed to produce anything truly provocative and influential for the last decade at least.  Instead they keep mass-producing to a certain trend, which leaves all music of any time painfully the same.

The main culprit here is technology!  It has never been easier to communicate, share and discuss with the modern devices available to us all on a day-to-day basis, but with all the technological advances that are happening we are not communicating more, we are communicating less and I don’t think we should ever under-estimate the importance of face-to-face discussion.

Conclusion

I know that most of this is only my opinion and is not greatly backed up with ground-breaking research or examples but I work in a business where this is happening, I can see the industries and businesses around me doing the same and with that I can see that creativity is being lost.  Technology seems to me to be the only sector where there is any innovation occurring, everything else has simply started regurgitating what has gone before.

For businesses to survive and things to feel exciting they need to push boundaries, not stick to formulas, however, this appears to be happening less and less. Surely centralisation of skills can only lead to good individual skill ideas and not great team ideas.

Are you a new business that is looking to create a web presence,  an existing business who wants to step out into the Internet or even just someone who feels the need to express themselves online – I can help you create the ideal platform for you!

The Internet is an ever changing system, and at the speed technology moves it can feel really daunting taking either your first step into the web or to commission an online solution that suits you. 

When I create websites I try to cut through the techno babble and deal with each specific need using the best solutions.  Whether it is a website that simply offers a window into your world or something more complex that allows you to update parts of the site yourself, I am sure I will be able to help.

If you want to see what I can do…then feel free to contact me – info@nasarik.com