Where Are They Now: SLAM Collaborative’s Mind the Gap

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Chair of the Month

Emma Weckerling
Emma Weckerling
Emma is the Former Managing Editor of Work Design Magazine.

SLAM Collaborative’s Mind the Gap submission has been deemed a world changing idea by Fast Company. See how the SLAM team is moving the workplace forward with this theoretical design project.

SLAM Collaborative

If you followed along our 2021 Next Work Environment Competition (Psst! Check out this year’s competition here!) you must remember the SLAM Collaborative team and their winning ‘Mind the Gap‘ submission. It’s a hard one to forget! This theoretical project envisioned by the team featured a mobile workplace that takes the daily commute and elevates it to become an extension of the workday. Check out their full submission here.

We checked back in with the SLAM Collaborative team to see what they are up to today and how their submission has evolved since last year.

What has happened with the project since the competition? How has the idea evolved?

SLAM: It was the brainstorming of radical ideas that led our SLAM team, Workplace Innovation Think Tank (WITT for short), to the theoretical project of customized train cars that include aspects of a high-performance workplace. This concept went on to receive recognition in the 2021 Next Work Environment Competition by Work Design, winning in three categories: New to World Solutions, Flex Work, Common Shared Amenities categories.

This win boosted our confidence to stretch the possibilities of the idea of working from the train. We entered the concept in the 2022 Fast Company World Changing Ideas Competition and were ecstatic to receive an Honorable Mention in the Workplace Category, which recognizes projects that improve our lives in the office, increase employees’ rights, or make work safer, smarter, or more meaningful.

Today WITT, whose purpose is to provide a platform to introduce new ideas and provoke global debate on the critical issues of the day, continues to collectively empathize with the many organizations we support in their challenge to understand and solve the conundrum of ‘how and why’ to bring people back to the office. Our team feels strongly that public transportation, specifically if transformed with a safe and smart design and in a less time-consuming manor, could very well be the missing piece that could solve many organizational problems we are facing, post pandemic, as we look to reimagine how we work.

What’s next? What are you working on now?

SLAM: Next step for the SLAM WITT team is to put these wheels in motion and move the Work From Train idea from theoretical to reality. As high-speed rail is gaining movement again in the U.S., notably the recently approved 90-mile section of California’s high-speed rail extending the system from the Central Valley into the San Francisco Bay Area.

We are currently developing a plan that will introduce the Work From Train concept to transportation systems with funding to explore and revamp their train car standards and design. Our efforts will include contacting industry leaders and collaborating with them in speaking engagements and partnerships in testing innovative transportation solutions. Our goal would be to be serve as the expert workplace point of view, as train design gains critical attention by public and private railway companies worldwide.

 

Special thanks to our 2022 Competition Partners:

     

Special thanks to our NEW 2022 Scholarship Sponsor:

 

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