ABB FUTURE CENTER Vateras, SWEDEN ABB is a heavy electric equipment manufacturer born out of a merger in 1988 between Swedish ASEA and Swiss Brown Boveri, and is renowned as a global technology company. A total of 160,000 employees work in 100 countries around the world. Since the merger, as part of the strategy to stay competitive, delegation of authority and agility became corporate policies. The Future Center was established in 1999 as one of the measures. Driving west from Stockholm for an hour brings you to a small town of Västeras, home of ABB in Sweden. Many old buildings remain that used to be factories to ABB and its suppliers. A portion of an old factory building was renovated and was converted into a small facility as Future Center, in September of 1999. As people became more aware of the importance of knowledge, the Center grew to be a tool for arranging encounters of people and ideas, not just internally but also from outside. The Center went a step further and has set its goal to turn ideas into projects and eventually commercial enterprises, or in other words, an in-house incubator. All projects that are aimed to grow into businesses are given a time span of 6 months. If after 8 weeks no progress is made, the project is cancelled. The atmosphere of the space naturally offers comfort of a home, taking advantage of the brick structure built in 1906. Surrounding an arena where seminars and forums are held, are various sizes of meeting spaces and project rooms, clarifying the Center’s intention to promote meetings of people. IT environment is state of the art. The daily discussions are posted on the Intranet and the forums are broadcast live through the Intranet using streaming video. But what the Center most encourages is to have face-to-face meetings and it recommends those with ideas or interested to visit the Center in person. The Center also arranges meetings between appropriate parties and provides services such as workshops and coaching systems to offer support in starting up a project.           Location: Vateras, SWEDEN     Move-In Date: 1999.9     Floor Area:     Workforce: 5 full time workers     Building Design: N/A     Interior Design:     Interview Date: 2000.11