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The widespread availability of wireless internet and the growth in mobile technologies has meant that businesses and entire industries that have been successful for decades can suddenly be disrupted over night with the launch of a new web-based application. No one is safe from it and companies are beginning to realise that to remain agile and competitive, they have to make changes to how they run their business.
A huge part of this is reconsidering if your company’s workspace is conducive to fast-paced collaboration and idea generation, both of which are essential in order to keep pace in a constantly adapting market.
Tom Garrison, Intel’s VP of PC Client Group and GM of Business Client Platforms, explains that businesses are starting to understand that the ways of working in the past – sitting at a desk, compartmentalised, little interaction, based on email – perhaps haven’t fostered the most innovative of environments.
“Businesses are fuelled by ideas, so the question is, how can we create ideas? What environments can be fostered that allow ideas to come reality? It’s very rare that people come up with a fully formed, great idea. Often ideas reside in a hunch in the back of your mind. Good ideas come from the ability for people to share their hunches with other people’s hunches – that collision of ideas is what allows people to come up with true innovation,” says Garrison.
“The reality is that workplaces are transforming. Enterprises and businesses of all sizes are asking the fundamental question, how can I create an environment that is going to give me an advantage so that my employees can come up with great ideas?”
For example, Garrison describes how enterprises and businesses are embracing the idea of open, collaborative workspaces, where colleagues can very quickly sit down with each other to share and discuss thoughts and ideas. The idea of ‘hoteling’ is also becoming increasingly popular, where a company allows for a given workspace to be shared amongst multiple people, which not only encourages employees to collaborate more, but it maximises the efficiency of the space itself.
Intel is helping businesses create these environments with its 5th Gen Intel Core vPro Processor, which includes next generation wireless capabilities, allowing companies to move towards creating ‘wireless enterprises’. Intel’s Pro Wireless Display technology (Intel WiDi), for instance, enables employees to give presentations and to connect up to displays, without the technical hassles that often come with having to use cables.
Whilst the 5th gen processors also support Intel’s Wireless Docking, which enables systems to automatically dock to monitors, keyboards, mice and USB accessories, allowing users to be connected and ready to work as soon as they walk up to their desk.
“It’s important to understand the type of changes we are talking about. What seem like small changes, when they are introduced at the right time and they interact with other small changes, can have an enormous impact. That’s what we feel is happening today.
“If you think about enabling expanded collaboration and creativity, it really is a function of efficiency, performance, mobility and collaboration. When you take those four elements and you multiple it by the scale of an enterprise, that’s where you see unrealised ideas transformed into realised revenue. That is a better way to work.”
A recent case study by HP highlights how the use of next generation Intel technologies can not only can create a more collaborative environment at work, but also deliver a strong return on investment. The case study illustrates how HP is in the process of transforming its work environment and is using the Intel Pro Wireless Display to boost employee efficiency, creativity and idea-generation. HP CIO Ramon Baez explains that when you operate on the scale of a company the size of HP, there are tremendous gains to be made in building a wireless environment.
“We have all had those meetings where you are sitting there and it takes you five to six minutes to get set up. Now multiple that across an enterprise with 300,000 people. Multiple what all those people are doing, they are wasting time in that five to six minutes. Do I have the right dongle? Do I have the right security fob? You’re thinking about the wrong things,” says Baez.
“We want to be able to cut cords, and not cut performance. We want people in our organisation solving real business problems, driving real business outcomes and not worrying about how to get prepared for a meeting,” he adds.
“Most people are working within a pod, within an open area, and communicating with their counterparts somewhere else on the planet, through our network – and that’s how people work today. By us cutting the cords, whether its internet access, viewing the presentation, not worrying about having the right power supply to last through the meeting, we believe that’s going save us half a billion dollars a year. That’s the world we want to live in.”
