First half of 20/20 was really hard on a lot of people: the pandemic, civil unrest, political instability. It was a difficult time for sure. Then there is the whole shock of kids at home from school, spouses at home, potentially lost jobs, etc.. That said, I suppose it is intuitive to think that a bunch of people leaving campus life and suddenly working from home would have an adjustment period anyway.

I'm also a little skeptical of the their leap from their dependent variables to "other research suggests less innovation." It's probably a fallacy on my part, but I am also skeptical that a company with what must be billions of dollars invested in high tech campuses is going to find that remote work is just as good as a campus environment.

I have been working fully remote, in remote friendly or fully remote companies for 12 years or so now. It is definitely a different environment and different way of collaborating than working on a campus. I would be interested to see similar research on such companies. I suspect that the results would be replicated, but would be interesting to know for sure.

Related anecdote: I was visiting Microsoft campus in Redmond pretty regularly around 2018/2019. Most of the meetings I attended included many people calling in to their video conferencing system from around campus and sometimes from home. I thought at the time that it seemed like they were on their way to a remote work situation anyway.