
Ask HN: Innovating in Remote First Environment - chinmays
In office scenario, you meet your coworker discuss and brainstorm together, and come up with an innovative solution.
How do you achieve innovation in remote first environment? Scheduling video calls for innovation simply doesn&#x27;t cut it!
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topkai22
My first response is: Why not, I've been doing it for years.

My second thought is that that: uh-oh, you've got a culture problem, not a
remote work problem.

Remote work changes certain work patterns. Innovation bull sessions often
emerge from a pressing need, and you want to grab someone right awat]y. In an
in-office environment, there are norms built up around use of IM, e-mail,
invites, and dropping by someone's workspace. If you have a burning problem
and knock on someone's door, it's hard to turn them away and focus on your own
problem instead. With an IM, it's much easier to schedule them for later.

One of the more unnatural things in a remote environment is to have to
actively accept getting randomized- if some IMs you, check it immediately. Or,
god forbid, if someone calls you without IM'ing first (this is functionally
equivalent to knocking on door, BTW). I've found once new to remote workers on
my team accept that it's the team norm to get a little randomized by others
then we get past some collaboration humps.

Since you didn't provide a lot of details, let's assume that I'm wrong and you
can easily get your colleagues to spontaneously meet with you. It might be a
tooling issue. I've gotten huge mileage out of just screensharing, but there
are better ways to collaborate. If you are talking about code, then
simultaneous edit tools like VS Live Share can really help. If you are
diagraming, there are number of whiteboard like environments available for
tablets (or you can get something like an MS Surface Hub for each employee,
which is a bit expensive.) I've also had success with just throwing Visio on
the screenshare.

Finally, some aspects of remote work are just changing perception of success.
Remote bull sessions aren't as FUN as in person bull sessions, just as
simulcasting a movie at home with friends or family just isn't the same as
watching it in person. That doesn't change anything about the movie. Are you
having problems with the solutions you are producing, or do they just FEEL
less exciting?

Successfully managing work remotely often means being more formal about
measurements or processes than we are in person- do you have evidence that you
are solving problems at slower pace, or less effectively? If not, why do you
feel innovation has decreased?

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memexy
Innovation happens from intersection and combination of ideas. This doesn't
require in person meetings (it doesn't hurt but is not necessary). So you'll
need to be more specific. What exactly is the obstruction from combining ideas
in remote environments?

