Apple Park's Work Environment: Innovation or Distraction?

Running Head: Apple park ‘s work environment
APPLE PARK ‘S WORK ENVIRONMENT
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APPLE PARK ‘S WORK ENVIRONMENT
Introduction
Technology utopias seem to be creating distractions for their employees in their work
environments (Johnny 2017). This is put into perspective by John Gapper in his article on
Apple’s five-billion-dollar campus known as Apple park that took at least seven to eight years to
complete. It architectural ingenuity and designs makes it a marvel that other firms such as
Amazon want to follow in its footsteps (Thomas 2017). The Apple park was designed to house
over twelve thousand apple employees for the core purpose of improving innovation and
productivity of those employees. The strategic design of the campus was not to house the
traditional office setting where employees were separated by floor and small cubical within those
floors ( Kim et al 2017). Apple viewed this setting as less productive and did not encourage
maximum interaction of employees, therefore the solution to this problem was to come up with a
futuristic open office building that will also showcase Apple’s objectives of being an innovation
and technology trendsetter. However, it's ironical that large firms such as Apple who can trace
their origin from garage startups, want to reinvent employee activity and promptings
professionals such as engineer to get up from their desk and intermingle for the purpose of idea
exchange. Most firms view this, as a tool that will assist them in adapting to an ever-changing
hostile business environment. Stefan Behling, the senior executive of Foster + Partners describes
Apple park, as a building which is pushing social behavior in the way people work to new limits.
This move has been heavily criticized by some of Apple employees, senior executives from other
firms and john gapper where in his article, he terms it as a big mistake that is irreversible due to
the heavy investment, artistic designs. time and money put into their aggressive most project so

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far. This brings the rise of four questions from the article that will be discussed in this paper in
detail.
a. Why was Apple park project created?
b. Why was the new works space not received well?
c. What should Apple and other firms do to avoid this in the future?
d. What is the influence of Apple park on the tech industry?
why was apple park project created?
Apple park is now the headquarters of Apple Inc., it recently opened in late 2017 to its
employees and the public while still under construction. This project is considered by many as
the last ground-breaking project pioneered by Steve jobs who as the CEO of Apple Inc. before
passing on. He is credited greatly through his input in many of its futuristic designs while still
focusing on the going green initiative, moreover his last public appearance before the Cupertino
committee where he convinced them to allow the ‘spaceship’ project to have a home in
Cupertino rather than relocating to another area which would be expensive while they already
had a presence there since the 70s .The apple park project was mainly designed to fit as many
employees as possible where it currently houses twelve thousand employees in a highly
sophisticated and innovated workspace. The building workspace was designed in a way that
employee will have the ability to build a relationship with their colleagues and counterpart form
different departments or teams for the core purpose of sharing ideas and identifying collaboration
opportunities. The building is segmented into modular sections referred to as pods that will be
used for office works, social activities and teamwork moreover it incorporated open spaces with
long tables where employees sit next to each other and do their various duties. Every Apple