Spaces for Creativity: Unconventional Workspaces and Divergent Thinking.

This article investigates the causal effects of unconventional workspaces—characterized by bright colors, unique furniture, vibrant artwork, and playful atmospheres—on individuals' divergent thinking, a key cognitive process in creativity. Across four controlled experiments with over 1,100 participants, the research finds that unconventional workspaces do not universally enhance creativity; instead, their impact depends on the relatedness between workspace features and the creative task. Specifically, when workspace elements closely relate to potential solutions, cognitive anchoring occurs, hindering divergent thinking, whereas unconventional spaces boost creativity only when task solutions are unrelated to the workspace features. These findings suggest that managers should carefully consider the alignment between workspace design and task characteristics rather than assuming unconventional designs inherently foster creativity, with implications extending to virtual work environments and individual versus group ideation contexts.