I think you’re wrong, but in an important way that deserves discussion, so please enjoy an upvote. First of all, innovation and productivity are not necessarily connected, and in many cases innovation is not at all what management wants or the business needs. (Using Jira is a sure sign that management does not want innovation, yet we see it in widespread practice.) Second, the quality of the colleagues males a huge difference. Not every workplace is golden age Bell Labs. Most people don’t have a Nyquist down the hall. I used to sit shoulder to shoulder with a guy who had YouTube videos on his second monitor all day long, to help him focus. Evidently it worked for him, he was a very solid contributor, but neither my productivity nor my ability to innovate were helped. (Like Jira, the open plan office is a sure sign that management values observable units of effort over either productivity or innovation.)