Why Every Innovator Needs a Whiteboard Wall: Enhancing Creativity in High-Tech Headquarters

Although high-tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Tesla have a wide range of digital tools at their disposal, the whiteboard wall offers them an ideal low-tech communication medium with unique qualities.  While writing and drawing on a premium whiteboard wall, users have no constraints. The process is effortless. When utilized along with a set of low-odor dry erase markers and some sticky notes, the wall can serve as the perfect vehicle for brainstorming, sketching out new ideas, and boosting general office interaction.

It’s good for innovators like the owners of high-tech companies to realize that using complex technology isn’t always the best way to solve problems. Frequently, low-tech tools are better. And this is certainly the case with the no-nonsense, easy-to-use whiteboard wall. In this blog post we’ll explore the many advantages of installing and using ReMARKable whiteboard walls in high-tech corporate headquarters, including enhanced creativity, accelerated innovation, better team morale, and more.

Boosts Creative Thinking

Immediately after it’s installed, a whiteboard wall becomes a workplace communications hub. Not only will everyone on your team use it, but it will encourage creativity in ways you could never have imagined. If you’ve had traditional whiteboards in your office they’ve probably been in meeting rooms and used for specific purposes, at specific times of the day.

However, installing a whiteboard wall in an open area, like the office lunchroom, will completely change the way people use a writing surface. That’s because the wall is out in the public domain for everyone to see, so your team members will naturally gravitate towards it. As a result, there will seldom be a time when the wall isn’t covered with spontaneous drawings and notes or being used in spur-of-the-moment meetings.

Hence, your whiteboard wall will prove useful for creative ideation in countless ways. First, it will allow everyone in the office to contribute their thoughts about specific issues or problems, allowing for the lively cross-pollination of ideas. For example, you might be walking by the wall and notice that a team member has just created a list of topics for an upcoming meeting. In such a case, it’s easy for you to add more items to the list. Upon seeing your additions, others may be inspired to do the same, so that whole new areas for discussion emerge.

Team members will also be inclined to hold meetings in the lunchroom just because they can make use of the conveniently located whiteboard wall. In the middle of such a meeting, a colleague who is eating lunch nearby might suddenly ask a question or pipe up with a useful idea. At other times, casual employee lunch conversations might turn into full-blown meetings, using the whiteboard wall as a handy brainstorming tool.

Promotes Collaboration

In addition, a whiteboard wall stimulates collaboration and camaraderie and creates a sense of bonding among team members that transcends the workspace. For instance, your company’s social committee might use it to post announcements or notes about upcoming communal events, and team members may use it to draw cartoon characters or post jokes that enhance the shared office experience. Because it’s always out in the open, it’s the ideal space to reach out to all members of the workplace community.

Thus, your whiteboard wall can become a tool for developing a vibrant company culture because it’s so accessible, low-tech, and easy for everyone to use and enjoy. Having a robust company culture will in turn raise your team’s morale, motivation, and productivity and ultimately improve your bottom line.

Encourages Spontaneous Ideas

As mentioned above, there will hardly be a time when your whiteboard wall isn’t filled up with impromptu drawings and notes, or being used for off-the-cuff team meetings. The wall’s vast, convenient writing surface provides a natural trigger for generating random ideas. And this can create a fertile foundation for developing new products or services.

Improves Visual Communication

Visual images are the seeds from which verbal ideas blossom. By visually presenting the links between a project’s key concepts through a graphic diagram, disconnected fragments of thought can coalesce in employees’ minds.  And what better way to create diagrams than on the immense open canvas of a whiteboard wall?

Innovation reaches a new level of sophistication when you use such visual techniques in the office. This occurs because powerful graphic displays stimulate out-of-the-box thinking and problem-solving through evocative images. These can then be transformed into new verbal concepts and developed into projects. To paraphrase the time-honored Chinese proverb, one picture is the source of a thousand words.

Facilitates Agile Workflows

Agile workflows are successions of steps in product development that break a project into phases instead of a long, chronological sequence. Several teams work on different assigned tasks during each phase, also known as a sprint. An Agile workflow focuses on constantly delivering small portions of work and getting feedback from stakeholders as quickly as possible. If any changes need to be made, it’s easy to do at the end of each sprint.

The various phases of an agile workflow are simple to display in a clear graphic on the vast canvas of a top-quality whiteboard wall. Such a diagram shows the specific steps required to complete the project. A graphic Agile project flow diagram also shows stakeholders any work item delays and blockers that may be occurring. Team members can easily use their whiteboard wall as a handy task board to interact with their workflow diagrams every day. These diagrams typically look like flowcharts, with the phases going horizontally across the wall.

Increases Engagement and Motivation

Does your management constantly grapple with the issue of employee engagement? You’re not alone in this regard. Indeed, research shows that barely 15% of employees are actively engaged while in the workplace. A good portion of the other 85% is actively disengaged, feeling unhappy with their work and spreading their lack of enthusiasm to colleagues.

Luckily, however, there’s an easy solution to this problem: having part of your whiteboard wall serve as the team bulletin board. The bulletin board can improve employee engagement by providing a handy space to post interactive questions, suggestions for improvement, games, and other attention-grabbing contents.

Do you wish that your employees would openly share their ideas for upgrading the workplace? Including a bulletin board section on your whiteboard wall is a perfect way to do so!

A bulletin board is a simple, enjoyable way to collect your team’s opinions, advice, and inspirations for new products or services. It’s particularly useful for headquarters cultures that center on innovation, creativity, and flexible thinking, as it makes for a feedback-friendly work environment.

If you want your team to freely share suggestions and ideas, consistency is crucial. Hold weekly meetings and encourage your team members to post their suggestions on the bulletin board so you can go over them at the next gathering.

Supports Continuous Learning

Another key benefit of having a whiteboard wall in your headquarters is that it’s highly educational for both you and your coworkers. Team members working on a project can easily use the wall to sketch out ideas, and leave the results up for others to see and comment on. In this way, the writings, doodles and drawings left by colleagues will help everyone on your team better understand key concepts and learn new information relevant to current projects. This in turn will lead to more ideas and notations being posted in an endless cycle of collaborative education and intellectual growth for everyone in the office.

A top-quality whiteboard wall is thus a vital tool for acquiring new knowledge and grasping the links between the multitude of diverse and innovative concepts your team showcases on its broad, open canvas. In this way the wall becomes a key factor in lifelong learning for the entire organization.

Summary

Article Name

Why Every Innovator Needs a Whiteboard Wall

Description

Boost creativity in high-tech HQs with whiteboard walls, fostering dynamic idea-sharing and innovation for every innovator.

Author

Susan Anspach

Publisher Name

ReMARKable Whiteboard Paint

Publisher Logo