The future of work in creativity and innovation: perspectives on on-site versus remote work policies and practices

Do organisations need mandatory return-to-office policies to foster creativity and innovation? This article evaluates that question through a balance synthesis of arguments presented in a live debate at the 2025 DRUID conference. The argument in favour of office mandates highlights that sustained and predictable patterns of co-presence enable the knowledge spillovers, tacit knowledge exchange, serendipitous encounters, intimate co-creation, and cultural cohesion that are critical to creativity and innovation. The case against such mandates stresses their potential costs, including reduced autonomy, psychological reactance, weaker motivation, homophily, and the risk of mistaking presence for effective collaboration, especially given the growth of distributed innovation and given that remote work allows firms to tap into distant talent. Our collective assessment is that co-presence clearly matters for creative and innovative work. The evidence presented during the debate does not clearly support the stronger claim that the threshold must be a majority of working time, or that the policy instrument must be a mandate. We conclude that the key challenge is not simply where people work, but how organisations facilitate interaction and collaboration across modes of work.