Tangram Interiors, a flagship dealership for Steelcase, Inc. and the leading interior solution provider in Southern California, is now authorized to resell Microsoft Surface Hub as a part of the Microsoft partner network. Tangram is one of 12 Steelcase dealers in the United States and Canada with this authorization.
“Tangram is thrilled to join the Microsoft partner network as part of a select set of Steelcase authorized dealers, and to offer the Surface Hub to our customers,” said Tangram President and CEO Joe Lozowski. “Steelcase and Microsoft recently announced a collaboration to create thoughtfully designed workplaces with the right mix of architecture, furniture and technology, and we’re excited to be part of this effort.”
Tangram has nurtured a collaborative and people-focused culture in the belief that people fuel innovation. That culture has led to the organic growth of five business units that complement the firm’s core furniture offering: flooring, fabrication, custom furniture, move management and technology.
Steelcase, Inc. is the overarching parent company of five brands: Steelcase, Coalesse, Designtex, PolyVision and Turnstone. Together, they offer a comprehensive portfolio of architecture, furniture and technology products and services designed to unlock human promise and support social, economic and environmental sustainability.
“The dealers offering the Surface Hub to customers are in a unique position to support businesses that want to empower employees, inspire ideas and accelerate innovation,” said Joel Zwier, smart and connected strategic partnerships lead, Steelcase. “Together with Steelcase and Microsoft, Tangram will help organizations thoughtfully integrate place and technology to encourage creative behavior at work.”
The selection of Tangram as an authorized Surface Hub reseller is part of a larger collaboration between Steelcase and Microsoft. Together, they are developing a range of technology-enabled spaces designed to help organizations foster creative thinking and better collaboration. These spaces seamlessly integrate the best of Microsoft Surface devices with Steelcase architecture and furniture. In March, Steelcase and Microsoft unveiled five new “creative spaces,” showcasing how they can help organizations unlock creativity for every employee.
The Problem: Fostering Creativity as a Business Advantage
According to joint research conducted by Steelcase and Microsoft, creativity is seen as a critical job skill driven by organizations need for innovation and growth in addition to employees desire for meaningful work. However, today many organizations invest in technology and space as separate entities rather than approaching them holistically. The lack of cohesion creates sub-optimal conditions for fostering creativity at work.
The research, which looked at 515 U.S. and Canadian companies with over 100 employees, revealed the pressure people feel about the shift toward more creative work:
• 72 percent of workers from diverse fields including health care, retail, education, financial services and manufacturing believe their future success depends on their ability to be creative.
• 76 percent believe emerging technologies will change their jobs, requiring more creative skills as routine work becomes automated.
• There is greater need to collaborate in business, yet only 25 percent of respondents feel they can be creative in the places they currently have available for group work.
• The study also reveals the connection between creativity and privacy, as employees ranked having a place to work without disruption as the second highest factor that could improve creativity, just behind the need for more time to think.
Creative Spaces:
The Steelcase and Microsoft exploration of creative work found that creativity is a process in which anyone can engage and requires diverse work modes as well as different types of technology. People need to work alone, in pairs and in different size groups throughout a creative process, and they need a range of devices that are mobile and integrated into the physical workplace. Additionally, spaces should inspire people without compromising performance.
“Every Microsoft Surface device strives to enable the creator in each of us. Devices like Surface Hub are fundamentally designed around how people naturally create, connect and collaborate,” says Ryan Gavin, general manager of Microsoft Surface Marketing. “With Steelcase we have the compelling opportunity to blend place and technology into a seamless environment that allows our most important asset, our people, to unlock their creativity and share that with others. The future of work is creative.”
“We are facing a time of unprecedented change at work. Through this partnership we will bring together space and technology to help workers and organizations solve the workplace challenges they face today and in the future and ultimately perform their best at work,” explains Sara Armbruster, vice president of strategy, research and new business innovation for Steelcase.
For more information on creative spaces and the partnership between Microsoft and Steelcase, visit www.steelcase.com/creativity or www.microsoft.com/en-us/devices/business/steelcase. For more information on Microsoft Surface Hub and Tangram, visit www.tangraminteriors.com.
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