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MSD employees helped to design their Innovation Center

When an office building is built a lot of factors need to be taken into consideration: security, economy, efficiency, architectural aspects, environmental criteria, indoor environmental quality, and design. Achieving optimal results requires the involvement of a number of experts from each area. When the MSD Global Innovation Center was built there was an additional factor, the people in charge who were definitely not experts in this field. Their qualification was different: they were employees, for whom the building was built, experts in the fields of IT and healthcare.

"We wanted to build a building in which our employees would feel good, where they would like to go, we wanted for our employees to do the maximum. When we decided on a new building, we asked each of our people, what they expect from it, and with those comments, we ran several workshops to discuss and sort the information. Then we negotiated those requirements with our suppliers, in order to realize maximum out of them, "says John Westby, director of MSD IT Global Innovation Center. “We believe that the path to effectiveness leads through satisfaction with a high quality facility," he adds.

One of the characteristic features of the building is its flexibility, which corresponds with the organizational structure of the company. "Our task is to come up with new solutions and innovations. We do not need a rigid hierarchy with rules. We have flexible teams that were formed according to current needs. We want people to come up with new ideas and be able to put them into practice so the work environment has been adapted that way", says Westby. Riverview internal arrangement is therefore very variable. They are not only movable tables but also walls between meeting rooms so that the arrangement can be changed according to actual teams’ needs.

The substantial part of the office building is not designed in a conventional style. On each floor there is an informal space to refresh, network, or meet with colleagues over a shared meal. Each floor has a space called "cinema", where seminars, workshops and presentations take place. Spacious terraces and a roof with a small garden and a unique view of the city are available for people to relax. As a counterweight to hotspots, which are beyond the classical concept of office space, there are so called ‘libraries’ which employees can use when they need peace of mind and concentration.

"Our company operates globally and we also need to cooperate at the global level, we have colleagues in the US and in Asia and we want to cooperate with all of them effectively – that’s why we invested so much time and energy into working environment and equipment," says Westby. It's not just about facilities for teleconferencing. "When you solve a problem and you have half the team on the other side of the planet, you need more than that. The building is therefore equipped with special boards that record and digitize content that people write and is thus now possible to share. There are also special communication walls installed. They look like giant computer screens on which those in the center can contribute to while using their mobile devices or specialty papers, whether they are together in one room, or they just sit at the identical walls in Singapore.

"Our task is to push the boundaries, to innovate. We're doing a demanding job and we want our new building to give us the best possible help, "says Westby.

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Building Global MSD innovative center was inaugurated on May 20, 2015. Just a week later won the contest Riverview Czech Invest Gold Award in the category "Real Estate of the year for technology centers and services". The innovative center also won the first prize in the "Investor of the Year" in the category of IT and shared services.

Autor: John R. Westby, viceprezident MSD and director of MSD IT Global Innovation Center