Despite some corporate leaders’ insistence that “return to work” initiatives are a great idea; it turns out, that flexibility about employee location is actually the key to success.
That is what Harvard Business Professor and author, Prithwiraj “Raj” Choudhury, concludes in his new book, “The World Is Your Office: How Work from Anywhere Boosts Talent, Productivity, and Innovation”.
Listen now, to find out why he believes that employees being able to choose where they live and work, is a big win for not only the companies that employ them, but also for society at large, and in particular; for cities here in the Midwest, like Akron or Cleveland, for example, that have lost thousands of jobs over the past four decades to globalization.
Choudhury maintains that remote work arrangements allow people to take advantage of more affordable housing and a better quality of life than is available in crowded and expensive big cities, can be a very big win for everyone involved–as long as there are still opportunities for teams to gather, create, and collaborate in person.
Of course, remote work depends on good and reliable teleconferencing technology, so we’ll also be talking about how the app that was once the dominant, gold-standard leader in that arena–Skype–was phased out for good this week by Microsoft, due to the increasing popularity of other apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
Prithwiraj Choudhury, Author
About the Author:
Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury is the Lumry Family Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School. He was an Assistant Professor at Wharton prior to joining Harvard. His research is focused on studying the Future of Work, especially the changing Geography of Work. In particular, he studies the productivity effects of geographic mobility of workers, causes of geographic immobility and productivity effects of remote work practices such as ‘Work from anywhere’ and ‘All-remote’. He is an Associate Editor at Management Science and was included in the 2023 Forbes Future of Work-50 list.
His research has been published in Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Research Policy, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Development Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Harvard Business Review, and has been cited in Freakonomics, BBC, Bloomberg Businessweek, CNBC, PBS, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR All Things Considered, Forbes, WIRED, Inc., Times of India, Globe and Mail, El Pais, and India Today Television among other outlets. He earned his Doctorate from Harvard, and has Degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Management. Prior to academia, he worked at McKinsey & Company, Microsoft and IBM.
