Newaygo breaks ground on 26,000-square-foot “office of the future”

A new venture in Newaygo could be an impressive economic driver, attracting knowledge workers to the small town through the construction of a state-of-the-art remote work center. The facility will combine incubator space, shared offices and retail in the heart of downtown.

According to excerpts from the story:

None of the $15 million West Michigan received in a 2006 federal WIRED grant is going into a new business center but the regional collaboration is the inspiration for this community's latest development. WIRED — a regional effort to help create a modern workforce development system in West Michigan — had a specific group exploring the concept of the "office of the future."

As part of that multi-county conversation, Newaygo officials took the idea and ran with it. The result was the unveiling Friday of The Stream Community Business Center in downtown Newaygo. WIRED brought Charles Grantham, a sociologist with Work Design Collaborative LLC and Jim Ware, a social psychologist and former instructor at the Harvard School of Business, to West Michigan in 2007 to introduce the concept of a "remote work center."

Read the complete story here.

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