WHEN SPARTAN MOTORS INC. CEO John Sztykiel met with his executive team this past fall, he drove to a conference room at manufacturer Peckham Inc., 26 miles away.

 

It is an offbeat tactic that the chief executive has devised for saving money and generating new ideas: holding meetings at other companies' offices.

Other executives have had the same idea in recent months. Managers at companies including specialty-vehicle maker Spartan and utility giant Duke Energy Corp. say the change of scene encourages creativity and lets employees pick up smart ideas from other companies.

At some companies, the practice grew out of the recession, but executives plan to keep doing it as the economy improves. It can be thousands of dollars cheaper than conducting off-site meetings at hotels or rented venues.

Mr. Sztykiel used to hold monthly strategy meetings with his executive team at hotels near his office in Charlotte, Mich., for about $1,000 a meeting. Last summer, he asked nearby manufacturers if he could meet at their offices instead.

One company he approached was Peckham, a 67-employee manufacturer of cold-weather gear and other products for the defense industry. Mr. Sztykiel says he thought Spartan could learn from Peckham, which is based in Lansing, Mich., and known as an environmentally friendly, energy-efficient manufacturer.

"We had to change some of the ways we were operating," Mr. Sztykiel says. Spartan's sales and profit took a hit last year. "We thought if we met at locations where they run a manufacturing business, we could see things that were done differently," Mr. Sztykiel adds.

Both companies serve the defense industry, and Peckham CEO Mitch Tomlinson says he thought the meetings might help his own business. "There may grow out of it future opportunities to partner together," Mr. Tomlinson says. He let Spartan meet free of charge.

Mr. Sztykiel held his August strategy meeting at Peckham; it cost him just $87 to feed eight people breakfast and lunch. He has held two more meetings at Peckham since. While there, he toured the manufacturing facility and noticed piles of fabric within walking distance of the forklift truck and the manufacturing area. The fabric got cut within 20 yards of the shelves where it is stored.

That got him thinking about ways to reduce distances at his own business. He is moving materials storage closer to Spartan's manufacturing facility, and is looking for closer suppliers to reduce delivery times.

Mr. Sztykiel was also impressed with one of Peckham's energy-saving initiatives: waterless urinals, which he plans to install at Spartan.

Other executives hope workers will get new ideas just by meeting in snazzier environs. Scott Pacer, director of marketing communications at Duke Energy in Charlotte, N.C., worries that the utility company's dull office space squelches staffers' creativity. "Right now we're in this old Communist-bloc apartment-building structure that really looks like something from Poland in 1968," he says.

He approached Wray Ward, a marketing firm nearby that has done work for Duke. The firm's recently renovated office features bright colors, glass walls and table-tennis and foosball tables. One conference room, called the garage, has a glass-panel roll-up door, an etched glass wall and a whiteboard that converts written words into electronic files. Wray Ward let Mr. Pacer's team meet there free of charge, saving him the $1,500 a day he pays to hold off-site meetings at hotels.

Kay Tuttle, a Duke account executive, was trying to come up with a name for a program to encourage customers to save energy. She and her teammates felt stalled at Duke's offices, which she describes as a "world of beige." They held a brainstorming session at Wray Ward and came up with 75 possibilities, including Re:volt, Enspire and Ensync. "Being in a different setting got people out of the 'utility mindset,' " she says.

At another meeting, Mr. Pacer's team developed new features for a Web site that helps residential customers monitor energy use. People tend to "throw out more ideas" at Wray Ward, Mr. Pacer says.

Last spring, investment adviser Tenex Capital Management wanted to expand beyond its Philadelphia office to New York. While searching for a Manhattan space from June to October, employees used a conference room at a Manhattan law firm Tenex had worked with. Now Tenex has its own New York office but still sometimes holds partners meetings at the law firm.

Varun Bedi, Tenex's chief investment officer, says his employees—many veterans of trading desks where they worked in jeans and T-shirts—benefited from seeing the law firm's "buttoned-up atmosphere." He liked the experience so much he held another meeting at a real-estate advisory firm, where employees learned from the firm's "entrepreneurial energy."

He prefers it to booking hotel rooms. "If we can help it, we'd like to save money," he says. "I'd rather stick to the other approach as much as we can."