‘Think Tank’ Organized for Good Workplace Environment

Lawrence Lerner, chairman emeritus of Environetics International Inc., a major office planning, design and automation firm, has announced the formation of Mega-Erg Inc., a privately funded research-and-development organization devoted to the improvement of the workplace environment.

The new firm will be “an outlet for unfettered, unconstrained, creative improvement of the workplace environment,” Lerner said. Calling it a “think tank,” he said it will be staffed by a hand-picked group of innovators from the architectural, mechanical, electronic and product engineering fields.

Mega-Erg plans to accumulate an inventory of patent-protected designs during 1986, ’87 and ’88 and to license them to manufacturers. The new company is working specifically with the biotechnology of systems furniture and electronic transactions and with the acoustic, illumination and heating/ventilation/air conditioning environments.

The name comes from the Greek “mega,” meaning large, great or powerful and also used by today’s scientists to mean a million times, and “erg,” from a Greek word meaning “work” and used by physicists as a unit of work or energy. The company is at 9328 Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, 90210..

“We are operating in an ideal ivory-tower atmosphere devoid of the prison of corporate, fiscal and political constraints,” Lerner said. “We will be able to design things without second guesses from those whose motivations are other than optimum.”