Kick off the day with a high-level look at the forces reshaping the life sciences workplace. This discussion will explore key market trends, evolving approaches to R&D and workplace strategy, and the challenges and opportunities shaping the environments in which scientific organisations work, innovate and grow.

Innovation clusters emerge in multi-stakeholder, place-based ‘ecosystems’ — such as Kendall Square — for a variety of interconnected reasons. There is the supply of innovative ideas, the right built environment, the availability of enough ‘risk capital’ and the transformative talent of entrepreneurs, all of which can contribute to the competitive advantage of organisations within the ecosystem. Understanding this real-world phenomenon is part of MIT’s research into the ‘science of innovation ecosystems’, with direct application into its own ‘backyard’. As we face a challenging world — with accelerating technologies (like AI), uncertain funding support, and growing global competition — how do the multiple stakeholders who care about this innovation hotspot, and call it home, pull together to ensure that the ecosystem continues to thrive in the face of these challenges?

This session explores how a life sciences workplace can contribute to the wider innovation ecosystem around it. Using live local case studies, Kendall Square stakeholders will explore how workplace, sustainability, public realm, community and amenity can work together to create a more connected environment for people, organisations and innovation.

Workplaces have long run on a gut feel, spreadsheets, and monthly reports. This session walks through how one global real estate / workplace organization built a data backbone. From occupancy sensors and space utilization tracking to portfolio-wide capacity forecasting. To predictive maintenance on building assets, to an AI co-pilot that puts operational data directly in the hands of site leaders.

As life sciences organisations rethink how their workplaces need to support science, people and business performance, what does the next-generation workplace model actually look like? This panel explores how organisations are defining and measuring impact across workplace, real estate and R&D environments, and how connected data and intelligence — from utilisation and collaboration patterns to operational performance and workforce experience — are informing decisions. Panellists will discuss how these insights are shaping workplace strategy, portfolio planning, space and investment, and how organisations are bringing together real estate, HR, technology, R&D and business leadership to deliver better outcomes.

AI can now generate stacking plans, test fits, and portfolio scenarios in minutes — so why do so many workplace AI deployments underdeliver? Drawing on new research from Harvard and BCG, CSIRO, and a real CEO-approved headquarters restacks, this session takes an honest look at where AI genuinely delivers, where it convincingly fails, and why the winning model pairs AI-powered speed with human judgment: buying outcomes, not tools.

People change every day. Does your workplace? Drawing on billions of human workplace interactions from data of over 1.4 million online lockers, Vecos and Worktech Academy identify the capabilities that distinguish adaptive workplaces from the rest, and what the impact is on the workplace, employees and business.

The creation of AstraZeneca's new Kendall Square workplace was far more than a building project. It was a multi-year transformation that brought together workplace strategy, employee engagement, change management, and operational readiness to create an environment designed to evolve alongside science. In this session, Workplace Services leaders Ginena Harkins and Alec Dupuis will share lessons learned from planning, activating, and operating a next-generation R&D workplace. Attendees will explore how thoughtful design, stakeholder engagement, and continuous adaptation can help organizations create workplaces that remain relevant long after move-in day.

AI hasn't actually reduced the need for physical lab space — it's instead widened who needs it. Robotics, autonomous experimentation, and computational biology are driving AI-native companies, hardware start-ups, and tech-enabled science ventures to find innovation environments that can accommodate a wider array of high intensity uses and foster iterative “knowledge loops” and collaboration with research partners. This session explores how a reconsideration of the traditional lab module is “opening the aperture" of legacy programing to appeal to more users in the tech industry and more uses within a tenant’s lease term

Today, workplace leaders across life sciences are navigating increasingly complex workplace needs and grappling with a more practical set of questions: how do you align stakeholders with different priorities, build buy-in for evolving workplace models, and work cross-functionally to turn strategy into action?

This interactive peer-to-peer workshop provides an academic lens and creates space to compare what is working across the sector, where organisations are still struggling, and how others are approaching stakeholder alignment, decision-making and collaboration across workplace and real estate, HR, technology, R&D and scientific leadership. Through live polling, facilitated discussion and open peer exchange, participants will bring their own challenges into the room, share experiences and explore practical approaches to making workplace change work.

Bring the day’s conversations together in an interactive closing session, reflecting on the ideas, challenges and opportunities shaping the life sciences workplace. We’ll revisit the questions that matter most, challenge assumptions and consider what the day’s insights mean for how workplace strategy should evolve.