INNOVATIVE BY DESIGN
How do you use your physical surroundings to build an innovative company culture? We talked to Wavemaker CEO Kristian Bæk-Mikkelsen about creating the Lighthouse Campus in the Edison building near Kløvermarken in Copenhagen. Wavemaker is the largest Danish media and tech agency and lives next to its WPP sister agencies.
You recently moved to a brand new HQ, tell us about the consideration behind?
The idea is to create a space that fosters innovation and collaboration. Open working spaces, but with lots of shared and private spaces to workshop and ideate.
How do you think an office can foster an innovative culture?
There is something to the height of the ceiling and having open canvases that you can put paint and post-its on. There is also something to how you design common areas. Do you run into the right people at the coffee machine or do you run into people who do the exact same thing as you, just for a different client?
How does sustainability fit into the new offices?
All the choices we made had a sustainable element to them. From the canteen and of course the coffee, how much paper we use, how we recycle, etc. We try to collaborate with the neighborhood – like Kofoed’s Skole on ideas for our Urban Garden on the rooftop and support the local artist community through the art that is going up on the walls. I would say that we are at the start of our journey, but it feels pretty good.
Coffee culture has been part of the new office design, what is it like?
First of all the coffee is really good. And I think that it is interesting that the more you involve yourself with the selection and brewing process of it, as well as the history, the better it tastes. But we made the cafés that Damn Good Coffee Company co-designed with us, the central part of our informal meet-up spaces. Wavemaker is a media, tech, and content agency and we live with our WPP sister agencies in the Edison building. The agency brands are separated, but the shared business is the connective tissue. So we live next to Flip Studio! which is an experience design studio, Intelligence Group that does hardcore econometric models and Ogilvy, which is mostly known as an ad agency.
Finally, how do you drink your coffee?
Increasingly black. When the core product is excellent, mixing in milk or foam dilutes the experience and takes away the nuances. I like to try different origins though. Hidalgo in the morning and Belén De Umbria in the afternoon.
