I would love to see some empirical evidence surrounding these magically enlightening "water cooler" conversations that managers claim creates value out of thin air, because I am convinced it is just lip service from managers and capital holders to justify their existence
I don't know about empirical evidence but surely personal experience must lend some credence to this topic. It is far easier to just hit a whiteboard with a colleague (all virtual options for this are always a mess) and iterate quickly.
I wouldn't know how we would get empirical evidence but collaboration in the office is definitely valuable...I think the debate now is: is it worth all the downsides of commuting and colocating around high COL areas
Knowing Amazon, the S-team absolutely used real data about productivity/cohesion/resilience for teams that spend more time in the office to make this decision, but they are absolutely not going to share it with anybody else.