We spent five years proving work can happen anywhere. What we are now rediscovering is where the ideas happen…

June 16, 2026

For years, our team worked largely remotely, meeting in person just one day a week.

During that time, we delivered award-winning campaigns, won new business and continued to grow.

The results were clear, remote work works.

Technology improved, meetings became easier to schedule, commutes disappeared, productivity remained high. Like many businesses, we adapted quickly and discovered that great work could happen from almost anywhere.

So, if we have already proven that, why are so many organisations choosing to bring people back together, including us!

Because the real debate was never about whether work can happen remotely. We have already answered that. The more interesting question is where ideas happen.

The best ideas rarely arrive neatly packaged inside a scheduled Teams call. They emerge from conversations between meetings. They appear when someone overhears a conversation and offers a different perspective. They develop when people build on each other’s thinking in real time rather than waiting for the next diary slot.

Steve Jobs famously designed Pixar’s offices around the idea of collisions between people. The thinking was simple: creativity often comes from unexpected encounters rather than planned interactions.

Research supports the same principle. Communication and collaboration don’t just depend on whether people can connect. They depend on how easily those connections happen.

What we have rediscovered is that proximity creates opportunities for those moments.

The moments between the moments.

As an agency that spends its time helping organisations bring people together through events, conferences and internal communications, the irony isn’t lost on us.

We have spent years talking about the power of human connection. Yet perhaps we’ve all underestimated just how much value sits in the unplanned interactions surrounding the planned ones.

It’s a lesson we see in events every day. The most valuable part of an event is rarely the agenda itself. It’s the conversation in the coffee queue. The debate sparked by a presentation. The relationship strengthened over lunch. The unexpected connection that changes someone’s perspective.

In fact, it’s one of the reasons we encourage clients to build space into their agendas. Not every minute needs to be programmed. Time for networking, discussion and informal interaction isn’t dead space. It’s often where the real value is created.

Perhaps the same is true of the workplace. Technology helps us work together. Human connection helps us think together.

Words by Jez Audus. Content Producer at mcm creative