[michaelochurch]

If your business is so undisciplined and random that it's "valuable" (and even more "incredibly valuable") to have improptu "hallway" discussions, then you're doing it wrong.

Disagree strongly. Creativity often comes from people synthesizing ideas that wouldn't ordinarily meet, and especially not in a way that can be planned by management.

In the typical corporate environment where employees are just expected to implement ideas handed down by management, there's no value in these unplanned discussions. However, if you're looking for creativity and organic development, then there's value in those sort of random encounters. That doesn't mean remote can't work. It does give it a different feel. But I strongly disagree that there's zero value to unplanned discussion.

[coldtea]

>Disagree strongly. Creativity often comes from people synthesizing ideas that wouldn't ordinarily meet, and especially not in a way that can be planned by management.

That's totally orthogonal to "hallway" meetings.

To put it another way, if you can't do the above over IM/Skype/email/etc, you're doing it wrong.

[JohnBooty]

I put "hallway" in quotes because it doesn't have to be a literal hallway. I agree that IM/Skype/email/etc is fine for them (and even better, in many ways).