Here is an excerpt from an article written by Whitney Johnson for Harvard Business Review and the HBR Blog Network. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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While dreaming and disrupting have unfettered me in many ways, they have shackled me in others. One of the most unexpected was losing a part of my identity. Once the rush of leaving a name-brand corporation wore off, it began to seep in that I could no longer call someone and say “Whitney Johnson, Merrill Lynch.” It was just Whitney Johnson. I also became reacquainted with the immediate concern of putting food on the table whilst on an entrepreneurial thrill ride to zero cash flow.

There’s a good dose of cosmic payback in all this. For years I pontificated about the importance of bootstrapping a business without having any firsthand notion of belt-tightening. Nearly a decade later, I find myself almost a fan of constraints. If you, like me, are a foot-dragging devotee, consider the following:

[Here is the first of three considerations that she discusses.]

Fewer resources produce proximity; proximity drives innovation. When I worked for a bulge bracket Wall Street firm, our family lived in a very large home; had we chosen to, we could literally have lived separate lives and rarely interacted. When I quit my job to become an entrepreneur, we downsized, moving into a home with ¼ of our former living space. No longer having a beautiful space to entertain sometimes makes me wistful. But most days I love our closer quarters. We bump up against one another, negotiate who sits where, who washes the dishes when and who watches what. Proximity can lead to friction, and friction can rub people raw. But it can also light a fire, one that warms and binds us into a family.

Workplace proximity can be equally productive. High-tech giant Adobe recently opened a striking new buildingin Lehi, Utah specifically designed to create an ecology of planned and unplanned cooperation and innovation among its employees. 85% of the interior is open workspace with only 15% devoted to offices. The building includes a full basketball court and extensive fitness areas, pool tables, a café and eating/lounging area — all to encourage employees to meet and interact with each other. Adobe hopes that by pushing people out of offices, their employees will run into each other more often, spontaneously generating ideas and solutions.

A sense of collaboration and immediacy often happens as people who are cash poor or without needed resources (e.g. young professional, entrepreneur, non-profit), are required to barter, to figure out what they have to bring to the table. Barter, I find, drives engagement in a deeper way than when you are simply dealing with money. The truth is we often don’t experience proximity unless we are forced to. If you want to form meaningful bonds that lead to productive collaboration and innovation, make room for more close encounters.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

 

Whitney Johnson is a co-founder of Rose Park Advisors, Clayton Christensen’s investment firm, and the author of Dare-Dream-Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream (Bibliomotion, 2012). Ms. Johnson is available for speaking and consulting. Follow her on twitter at @johnsonwhitney. To more of her HBR blog posts. please click here.