In every network there are always one or two people with connections to many more people than anyone else. Finally, there are people with lots of indirect links to other people - who are part of all sorts of networks without necessarily being in the centre of them. Stephenson is helping redesign its headquarters in Michigan. These are the ones other people go to in order to get information. Give them an environment that allows access.
Gatekeepers represent the fit between groups.
They transmit ideas. Rather than give them one fixed work location, give them a series of touchdown spots where you want them to stop and talk, so enabling their meandering. The point of the new offices is to compel us to behave and socialise in ways that we otherwise would not - to overcome our initial inclination to be office suburbanites. But, in all the studies of the new workplaces, the reservations that employees have about a more social environment tend to diminish once they try it. Jacobs knew the virtues of Greenwich Village because she lived there.