Based solely on my own experience, I believe that the benefits to be gained by physical proximity decrease according to an inverse square law. The benefits gained from sitting with the team you're currently working with can't be discounted, but as teams grow and your team overflows a single office, the synergies shared between team members in the same room far outweigh those with team members in the next room, to the point where they could be next door or across the country with little difference.
Embracing the distributed approach and realizing the cutoff point leads to building better tools for collaboration and integrating them into the work environment. Without this recognition, the mentality is that you can always talk to someone in person.
I've worked in multinational companies where collaborating with someone across continents, bar the time difference, was just as easy as working with someone down the hall. I currently work for a company that has not yet achieved this recognition, so working with anyone outside my immediate office takes hard work and determination.
Embracing the distributed approach and realizing the cutoff point leads to building better tools for collaboration and integrating them into the work environment. Without this recognition, the mentality is that you can always talk to someone in person.
I've worked in multinational companies where collaborating with someone across continents, bar the time difference, was just as easy as working with someone down the hall. I currently work for a company that has not yet achieved this recognition, so working with anyone outside my immediate office takes hard work and determination.