> “The idea you can only be collaborative face-to-face is a bias,” he said. “And I’d ask, how much creativity and innovation have been driven out of the office because you weren’t in the insider group, you weren’t listened to, you didn’t go to the same places as the people in positions of power were gathering?”

This is exactly it; this whole near-mystical thinking about "hallway conversations" isn't encouraging serendipitous innovation, it's encouraging the political gamesmanship that businesses have been accustomed to.

I think that we will look back at the billions/trillions spent on office space in the world's most expensive cities as one of the biggest misallocations of capital in history.