We often talk about innovation as though it can be summoned by policy decree. We announce funding programs, establish task forces, publish strategies and set ambitious targets. All of these things have their place. But innovation rarely begins in a strategy document. More often, it begins with a conversation that was not scheduled.

It happens when a scientist meets an entrepreneur in a shared café. When an architect overhears a conversation between a teacher and a software developer. When a student encounters an artist, an engineer or a public servant and begins to see an old problem differently. The breakthrough may emerge in a laboratory, but the spark often comes from somewhere less formal: a corridor, a courtyard, a workshop, a library or a lively public square.

This is why the design of our spaces matters far more than we tend to acknowledge.

Creativity is not simply an individual talent. It is also a social and physical condition. People are more likely to generate new ideas when they are exposed to different disciplines, experiences and perspectives. The spaces around them can either encourage those encounters or prevent them.

Too many of our buildings and institutions are designed for separation.

Departments occupy different floors. Professions gather in their own districts. Offices are divided into teams, schools into subjects and cities into single-purpose zones. We have become highly efficient at organizing people into categories, but less effective at allowing ideas to travel between them.

That is a problem because many of the challenges facing our country do not fit neatly within one category. Improving public health is not only a medical question; it involves housing, transport, food, technology and community life. The transition to a greener economy requires scientists, financiers, manufacturers, planners and citizens to work together. Raising productivity will not come from one sector alone, but from combining new technologies with better management, stronger skills and more imaginative business models.

The next wave of national progress will therefore depend on our ability to connect people who do not normally meet.

Serendipity may sound accidental, but it can be designed for. A well-planned innovation district, university campus or town centre does not dictate what people should discuss. It creates the conditions in which unexpected discussions become more likely. It offers shared spaces where specialists and non-specialists can mix, places to pause rather than merely pass through, and facilities that are open to the wider community rather than sealed behind institutional walls.

The same principle applies inside organizations. An office designed entirely around isolated efficiency may allow people to complete familiar tasks, but it does little to generate unfamiliar ideas. Creative workplaces need quiet areas for concentrated thought, but they also need common tables, project rooms, workshops and informal meeting points. The goal is not to force constant interaction. It is to make useful interaction easy.

This is especially important in an age of remote and hybrid work. Digital tools have given millions of people greater flexibility and removed unnecessary commuting. That is valuable progress. But virtual meetings tend to be purposeful: we join them because we already know whom we need to speak to and why. What is often missing is the unplanned encounter with someone outside our immediate team—the conversation that introduces a new problem, suggests an unexpected partnership or challenges an assumption we did not realize we were making.

The answer is not to abandon remote work. It is to make physical gathering more worthwhile. People should not be asked to travel merely to sit at a desk and conduct online meetings they could have attended from home. When they come together, the environment should support collaboration, experimentation, mentoring and exchange. The office, campus or civic building should become a place of connection rather than attendance.

Our public spaces have an equally important role. Innovation is often portrayed as the work of elite institutions, but a truly innovative country draws ideas from the widest possible range of people. Libraries, cultural centers, markets, parks and community workshops can become part of a broader creative infrastructure. They allow citizens to encounter new knowledge, test ideas and participate in shaping their neighborhoods.

This matters for fairness as well as economic growth. Talent is distributed widely; opportunity is not. When creative facilities are concentrated in a handful of prestigious buildings or prosperous districts, we exclude people whose insights may be exactly what the country needs. Every region should have places where young people can make things, founders can meet collaborators, researchers can engage with communities and established businesses can encounter emerging technologies.

Regeneration policy should take this seriously. A collection of expensive buildings does not automatically create an innovation district. Nor does attaching words such as “creative”, “digital” or “knowledge” to a development. Successful places need affordable workspaces, good transport, welcoming public areas, cultural activity and a genuine mixture of people and uses. They need to feel alive beyond office hours. Most of all, they need to remain accessible to the people who gave the area its character in the first place.

There is also a lesson here for education. Schools and universities should not treat creativity as the preserve of the arts, just as they should not treat technical ability as the preserve of science and engineering. The most valuable learning increasingly takes place across boundaries. Students should have opportunities to work on real problems with people from different subjects and backgrounds. A future engineer should understand human behavior. A future designer should be comfortable with data. A future policymaker should know how ideas are tested, built and improved.

The spaces in which they learn should reflect that ambition. Flexible studios, laboratories, performance spaces and shared workshops can encourage students to become producers of knowledge rather than passive recipients of it.

None of this means that architecture alone can transform the economy. A beautifully designed building cannot compensate for weak leadership, closed institutional cultures or a lack of investment. Serendipity also requires trust. People must feel able to share unfinished ideas, ask naïve questions and speak to those outside their professional rank. The most impressive atrium in the world will achieve little if everyone inside it is afraid to take a risk.

But physical design sends powerful signals about what an institution values. A locked door communicates one thing; an open workshop communicates another. Rows of private offices reinforce hierarchy. A shared table invites exchange. Spaces shape behavior, and repeated behavior shapes culture.

If we want to take our country to the next level, we must think beyond the conventional ingredients of innovation. Capital matters. Skills matter. Research matters. Infrastructure matters. But so do the places where these elements meet.

The future may be invented in laboratories and boardrooms, but it will also be imagined in cafés, libraries, studios, corridors and public squares. Our task is not to predict every breakthrough. It is to build a country in which breakthroughs have more opportunities to occur.

Innovation begins when ideas collide. We should design for the collision.