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.

This case study will explore the journey of 290 Binney Street, from the original vision and planning through to the 2026 move-in. Looking beyond the move itself, the session will explore how a new life sciences workplace can remain adaptable, optimised and responsive as organisational and scientific needs continue to change.

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.

Life sciences workplaces are evolving into integrated ecosystems where labs, R&D environments, and collaborative spaces and technology collectively shape scientific output and employee experience. As organisations face increasing pressure to accelerate discovery while optimising cost, space, and talent, traditional workplace KPIs are no longer sufficient to define success. This session explores how leading organisations are reframing “impact” through connected data, spanning lab utilisation, collaboration patterns, operational performance, and workforce experience. Panellists will discuss how organisations are integrating decision-making across science, real estate, HR, and technology, and how this shift is reshaping workplace strategy and scientific productivity.

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

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.

As organizations become more interconnected and specialised, competitive advantage increasingly depends on how effectively they engage with the wider ecosystems around them. This session explores how networks, communities and place can support innovation, organizational adaptability and long-term growth, with a particular lens on the Cambridge/Kendall Square ecosystem and what it can teach us about the future of life sciences organizations.

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.

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.