These ideas are being researched and showcased 60 miles north of Manhattan, at a project called Bluespace, which has been developed by IBM and furniture company Steelcase and launched in 2001.

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But KI's larger competitors, such as publicly traded Steelcase and Herman Miller, were hit worse by the tech falloff.

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"Gathering big data about human behaviors can be a sensitive topic, " says Dave Lathrop, director of workspace futures and strategy at Steelcase Inc.

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