[goralph]

I’ve had plenty of productive “water cooler” conversations. Especially with people from other teams, as we don’t interact with each other much. Cross pollinating ideas in a large organisation is conducive to spontaneous creativity.

However, neither of our statements are very useful as they are just anecdotes, a result of our personal experiences.

[stevenAthompson]

As you say, these are just ancedotes. There have been studies though.

Even if you subjectively "feel" that spontaneous creativity is increased, these chats don't make companies more profitable. So I'm guessing that this "creativity" doesn't have much actual value, and forced in person work certainly has a high cost to the employee and society.

Hard to justify the cost/benefit.