How is it possible to shape future horizons starting from 150 years of history? Sedus tried to summarize its solutions in the New Horizons online event. The value of sustainability and the belief that what’s good for employees is also good for business can still drive solutions for the office, home office, hybrid and agile work, management apps, and projects for future virtual workspaces.
From seats and chairs to physical offices, to virtual spaces: the evolution of Sedus products also encompasses the history of our ways of working in its 150 years. However, past experiences must constantly be renewed with new perspectives and objectives, such as being a climate-neutral company by 2025.
As Arndt Pechstein, founder of phi360 and inventor of hybrid thinking, explained in his speech, we live in a world that can be described with the acronym VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. To cope with this new world, we need to adopt a different vision for the future: we must be able to think the unthinkable, foster a new and effective way to interconnect people, ideas and technologies, in an agile way, and always creating new skills and solutions.
In this world, the most important human faculty we need is intuition, which is not based in the rational neocortex of our brain, but in the limbic system, where emotions, trust, and the ability to make decisions take also place.
These ideas inspired Sedus in designing new products, from sit-standing desks to furnishings and solutions designed for the home working. The hybrid experience of the domestic and professional space guides the creation of comfortable and informal environments, where informal encounters are constantly suggested through furnishings, which are designed to allow to work differently, depending on the needs or the time of the day. Products are, therefore, characterized by increasing flexibility, which inspired the furniture on wheels that we have already talked about during the Tea Party Working on Wheels.
The large degree of flexibility that the business world of the future will need is made possible above all by technology. Sedus gives an example talking about the possibility of implementing the functions of se:connects, the management system for smart working, which made it possible to better manage the workplace during the pandemic, easily allowing distancing, disinfection, and new options to find colleagues available inside and outside office space.
Also, the project of the creation of a 3D virtual work environment, carried out with Schema Design, is an example of a possible solution for the future: an easy-to-use digital space through which the company can connect and make a new sense of a large amount of data in order to create new knowledge, solutions, and to implement internal processes and collaboration.
As Christian Marc Schmidt, CEO of Schema Design said, we are living in a period of radical digital transformation, where everything becomes data.
This datification requires new interfaces to better control and make the most of this gigantic amount of information.
But man cannot live without significant personal connections: the digital and physical world are not alternatives, but technology can help make the physical experience more enriching, guiding the exploration of its complexity.
After all, this is the most interesting challenge facing Sedus and all the companies in the sector.
Text by Gabriele Masi.
