From The Inside

Offices are in some stage of reopening all over the world as companies welcome employees and clients back in the ways that work best for them. 

As the return to the workplace sets up to be flex-first for most companies, assigned seating will give away to the need for hot-desking, hoteling, and neighborhood arrangements. With any strategy, the ability for employees to find and reserve a desk is key to productivity and a frictionless experience. 

As the return-to-the-workplace picks up steam, with companies plotting when and how to restart physical operations, we can see that flexible work is here to stay. Nine-to-five is a distant memory. 

Data captured by our leading WiFi-based indoor location platform enables companies to take advantage of their two greatest resources: people and property. Here, we explore the right way to measure density. 

Companies face the challenge not only of reopening offices, but restructuring them to suit how they expect teams will want to use them. But how can they prepare when there are more questions than answers?  

Nearly 60 percent of employees will return to a physical workplace, according to recent stats from the International Data Corporation (IDC). Still, as with all the uncertainties faced by businesses set to emerge from a pandemic, it’s not clear how often those people will actually be onsite.  

Introducing InnerSpace’s latest guide to lead your organization’s workplace revolution 

Now more than ever, we all want to visit grocery stores and other essential businesses when they’re not crowded. Before the pandemic, this information helped us to save time and avoid lines.  Now, knowing how busy a place is adds an extra layer of safety and comfort.

Our CEO James Wu shared the stage with an expert panel at the latest Realcomm webinar focused on workplace analytics for the future of work and the hybrid office. It was a timely discussion on how building owners and operators can go beyond occupancy data to facilitate a truly flexible workplace focused on density, efficiency and experience. In case you missed it, here are the highlights. 

Figuring out who comes back to the office, and when, is only one part of the journey back to the office. Guidelines from the likes of the CDC, OSHA and public health authorities recommend everything from updating HVAC systems to enhanced cleaning procedures and creating both visual reminders and physical barriers to ensure people are willing and able to maintain physical distance.  

Outdoors, when walking, driving or cycling, apps have replaced paper maps when it comes to figuring out where we are in relation to where we are going. GPS technology is omnipresent – except when it comes to the indoors. In offices, malls, museums and airports, it doesn’t work. 

Twenty chairs at a long horizontal boardroom table. Six more lining the back of the room, never used. A TV screen on one wall that only half the attendees can easily see. Arteries of cords running from two speaker phones pumping a handful of expansion mics across the table. Soon, this will be a distant memory. As companies look to return to the office, flexibility will be a primary focus that transforms meeting spaces.

Summer 2005: the San Francisco Coworking Space opens. Two years later, “coworking” appears as a Wikipedia entry, and 75 coworking spaces materialize around the world (according to this timeline). By the time the calendar flipped to 2012, that number had ballooned to more than 2,000. 

There’s no question that real estate remains, well, expensive. Of all the line items impacting a business, real estate is one of the most pressing – one that companies are now doing more than ever to control.  

The office isn’t dead. The office as we knew it, is.  For many of you this statement comes as no surprise. While we’ve proven that working from home is doable, many have recognized that this dramatic shift was not without its negatives.

In a way, 2021 is the year for everyone to start fresh. Not long ago, executives were focused on finding ways to reduce their real estate footprint, and/or grow headcount within it. Now, business leaders have the opportunity to embark on a thoughtful pivot to create flexible spaces that will boost productivity, ensure safety, and serve the needs of employees. 

Data captured by our leading WiFi-based indoor location platform enables companies to take advantage of their two greatest resources: people and property. Beginning now in this series of posts, we will explore each powerful metric available through InnerSpace’s technology that business leaders can analyze and leverage to affect meaningful change.

As the future of work evolves, so too does the role the office will play and this raises questions critical to its evolution:  How much office space is needed? How should it be designed? What is the purpose of the office? How can it help improve culture, communication and productivity? How will it serve my company’s growth?

We’ve previously explored why an all-or-nothing work-from-home strategy isn’t realistic for the future of work. The reasons are many: employees are fatigued, boundaries around work hours are blurred, culture is suffering, and productivity has taken a hit.

Managing disruption, maintaining productivity, and encouraging empathy were top themes last year as the world's office towers emptied and employees moved to a work-from-home model. Leaders watched the pandemic for signals that we could return to the office as they recognized fatigue in their employees and decline in productivity. The news of the vaccine gives us a glimmer of hope, and means we can now start creating the workplace of the future. So what does that look like, when will it happen, and what will it take to get there? We predict these top 5 trends for 2021 with innovation, distributed working, and workplace leadership major themes for the year.   1. The return to the office will begin Our clients have shared a consistent and strong message: offices will reopen. The reasons? Productivity, culture and retention. Work from home was attractive prior to the pandemic in a flex-work model, but now that many have experienced it full-time, the realization that an all-and-nothing strategy isn’t favourable. Zoom calls dominate the day with actual work happening around them. Colleague relationships suffer with lack of natural exchanges. And with nearly everyone having a similar experience, company’s struggle to differentiate beyond salary in meaningful ways. The office is more than a destination, it plays a significant role in the company experience, culture, values, and services. The desire to return is near-universal.

Changing information. Indecisive governments. Unclear direction. While our modern lifestyle thrives on instant knowledge, it is taking a long time to understand how this new coronavirus threatens the way we live and work – even for those who are best equipped to give the answers. 

The honeymoon phase of working from home is officially over. And despite misleading headlines touting that most companies will move to permanent virtual operations, the reality is that we’ve learned something during this pandemic. The office is a desired destination that provides opportunities for greater team cohesion, collaboration, social connection - and yes, even actual work.

The pandemic has changed how we've worked for the foreseeable future. Companies are determining how, when and why they'll return to their office space. 

We’re now six months into a global pandemic. Spring lockdowns gave way to gradual reopenings, and now the threat of closures loom large again as case numbers in many regions creep upwards. 

It’s not long since “digital transformation” first became a business buzzword. In the 90s and 00s, the concept spoke to the opportunity to digitize an organization, to shift from manual input, to bring a business online, to deploy the latest e-solutions. Digital transformations often moved entire industries into the digital era; Uber forced taxi companies into apps,  Amazon led to online stores, and shipping being a defacto standard for businesses large and small. Banks raced to catch up with each other to provide mobile banking solutions after the advent of online-only banks like Tangerine. 

Just as society is opening back up in stages, InnerSpace believes the workforce will follow a phased approach too:

Whether an office has already re-opened, is planning to re-open, or never fully closed during the COVID-19 crisis, each business shares two common goals: 1) keep employees and visitors safe; 2) keep the doors open. 

InnerSpace Launches intrack, contact tracing to keep employees healthy & safe Location intelligence platform provides companies with always-on, private and secure solutions to keep employees safe and business running

COVID-19 has thrust health-care workers to the front lines, caused personal tragedy, and redefined what jobs are “essential.” Economically it has imperiled industries, triggered layoffs, and all-but-stopped life within office complexes, malls, stadiums, and urban hubs.  Now, governments face the question of how to lift their finger off the pause button. Any strategy to do so will long predate any vaccine – and its main measure of success will be how it enables officials to track COVID-19 infections and contain the pandemic. It is imperative that these strategies come far sooner than when someone arrives in the ER, or receives a test. 

A popular question as we think about going back to the office is: how will I know if someone I work with has been infected? For the executive team, the question becomes: how do I avoid shutting down my business should one of my employees become ill?

This is the final article in a three-part series exploring what lays on the other side of COVID-19 for businesses. Click here for part 1 and part 2.

This is the second article in a three-part series exploring what lays on the other side of COVID-19 for businesses. Click here to read part 1 

In cities across America, office towers are vacant. Museums are empty. Sports are cancelled. Live events postponed. Many of us, the ones who can, have put outdoor adventures and office life on hold to help stop the spread of an extremely contagious virus. The escalating health and economic consequences of COVID-19 are ones we will talk about for a very long time. 

InnerSpace Offers Indoor Monitoring Solution Free of Charge to Retailers During COVID-19 Pandemic WiFi powered indoor location platform provides people analytics to support social distancing, store layout and staffing strategies

The questions ‘Are we doing enough?’ and ‘Did we move fast enough?’ are running through everyone’s mind as we continue to receive news reports that the coronavirus COVID-19 continues to spread. 

InnerSpace Introduces Public Health & Safety Monitoring Solution  Indoor location platform provides municipalities with emergency response and public safety solutions on existing WiFi networks Toronto, Canada - March 30, 2019 - InnerSpace, the world’s most accurate WiFi-based indoor location intelligence platform, today announced its product capabilities to support all levels of government to analyze the patterns and movement in public spaces using existing WiFi networks. The platform is ideally suited to understand the movement of people inside public spaces and can support emergency response strategies, social distancing programs, and help Smart Cities implement effective security and public safety measures.

InnerSpace Appoints Cerys Goodall to President & Chief Operating Officer Goodall to steward company in new markets and bolster client experience Toronto, Canada - March 30, 2019 - InnerSpace, the world’s most accurate WiFi-based indoor location intelligence platform, today announced the promotion of Cerys Goodall to the role of President & Chief Operating Officer. In this role, Goodall will support the investment strategies for the company while continuing to oversee the entire customer journey. Goodall’s responsibilities include leading sales and marketing, client delivery, professional services and data science programs as the company moves to a software-based platform and enters new markets including public safety and security. 

Innovation and the P word, Part III: Amidst a Pandemic In the first and second posts in this now three-part series, we looked at how InnerSpace prioritizes privacy through its technology, and the value exchange of privacy and innovation through the lens of Sidewalk Labs. Now, amidst a global pandemic, we are revisiting privacy in a time that demands heightened well-being and safety. 

Mist Expands Vision of Universal Standards-Based Indoor Location

Throughout the evolution of corporate America, buildings didn’t tend to inspire much outside the ordinary. Apart from the shifting designs that reshaped cityscapes over the years, inside those buildings, the systems remained more or less the same. One decade after the next. 

The new rollercoaster. A book signing. The emergency department. The latest Johnny Cupcakes t-shirt release. 

The indoor location market has been one that analysts like Gartner have been studying for years. Expected to reach $41.0 billion by 2022, companies around the globe are bringing forward new technologies that make indoor location more accurate and useful. Recently InnerSpace was named a company to watch in the Magic Quadrant for Indoor Location Services, and included in the Market Guide for Indoor Location Application Platforms. Needless to say, we're excited about the momentum. But what has been challenging this market? 

It’s time we all have a heart-to-heart conversation about meeting rooms. No, really. They are the piece of working in an office that never quite fits the puzzle, the headache that never quite subsides, the element whose coordination always takes longer than it should. 

Last fall, the world’s largest coffee chain opened a new concept store in Manhattan. At “Starbucks Pickup”, customers must use the app in advance to order and simply pick up their beverage. A second such grab-and-go model just opened here in InnerSpace’s home city of Toronto.

In the lead-up to a big game or high-profile concert, city stadiums can see an influx of tens of thousands of people, often arriving en masse. For fans, picking the “wrong line” isn’t cut and dry and, as we all know, wait times have a direct link, whether positive or negative, to the fan experience. 

Work life in an office is slowly slipping away from what was once the norm not long ago: 9-5 hours in the office, a couple of mandatory breaks, and a sea of desks adorned with personal effects, drawers of snacks and spare shoes underneath. 

InnerSpace Awarded Patent for Automated Indoor Map Generation Capabilities US Patent Office recognizes indoor location platform’s technology to support maps for indoor navigation

How One Major Coffee Chain Used Indoor Data to Improve Service, Slash Wait Times: An InnerSpace Study  

Indoor location platform enhanced citizen safety and first-responder speed-to-response

In the first post in this two-part series, we looked at how InnerSpace prioritizes privacy through its technology. Here, we take a deeper dive into the wider world of privacy and innovation. 

HOW INDOOR LOCATION TECH ENHANCES PRODUCTIVITY AND IMPROVES EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING: AN INTERVIEW WITH INNERSPACE CMO CERYS GOODALL At the start of spring this year, InnerSpace announced the close of a $3.2 million seed round led by BDC Capital’s Women in Technology Fund. 

In 2002, a film starring a certain Tom Cruise which was based on a 1950s short story, the future was imagined as a somewhat dystopian police state that featured an extreme lack of privacy. It’s not hard to see how plots like that of Minority Report can influence how people perceive indoor “tracking” technology and what it actually entails.

From Collision to Queens University and the upcoming DC5G, our CEO James Wu has enlightened audiences across North America about how we’re dramatically changing the way indoor space is used – and the powerful benefits it brings to companies. 

Anyone who’s worked in an office can attest to the fact that meetings can sometimes be a waste of time. But as it turns out, trying to find space to even hold a meeting can be wasteful on a far greater level. Client calls that go long and delay the next meeting; three people taking up a 15-seat boardroom; unannounced issues that require private space to chat – the reasons are varied and often frustrating.

Satisfaction in any company’s product or service often boils down to one key factor: ensuring an excellent experience. Looking after all the details that lead to happy people –  while simultaneously managing deliverables and operating costs – is both tricky and critical to a company’s success. Yet knowing what and where to tweak and improve can be difficult to discern on a day-to-day basis – and relying on customer feedback alone can prolong percolating issues, or be misleading altogether.

Tech titans like Google and Apple have made significant investments in mapping and navigation. They’ve taken their expertise in location data and started applying its value to the indoors. And over the last few years a number of startups have emerged to provide insights around indoor location data - primarily in retail. All claiming to have built breakthrough solutions. But yet, indoor data isn’t ubiquitous. Adoption of indoor location to create Smart Buildings remains highly customized and consultative. 

Parades through the streets of Toronto and St. Louis brought a celebratory conclusion to the NBA and NHL seasons. While millions of basketball and hockey fans watched on screens, stadiums that hosted this stretch of playoffs welcomed sell-out crowds that streamed through their gates. 

Raj decides that today he’d like to work in the west wing of the office – it’s quieter so he can focus on a major report that’s due. Tomorrow, he plans to work near the cafe for his brainstorm session, taking advantage of the camaraderie that tends to percolate there. Later in the week, he’ll telecommute from the road while visiting clients in communities across the region.

This past week has been a blur! The global tech community had their eyes on Toronto as Collision marked its first year in our gorgeous city. Hosted at the Enercare Centre, the conference hosted the likes of Prime minister Justin Trudeau, Seth Rogan talking about Houseplant, Joseph Gordan-Levitt from HITRECORD, and more. Designed to be the perfect intersection between tech, investors, government, and media, Collision didn’t disappoint!  

For thousands of years, people have flocked to stadiums and arenas to see exciting live events, and in those thousands of years—virtually no major updates have been made. Whether an ancient Roman at the Colosseum or a loyal Cubs fan at Wrigley Field, the experience is more or less the same. You arrive at the venue, find your seat, then and watch the action in front of you unfold.

We're celebrating a very exciting milestone: the closing of our seed funding. We raised $3.2M USD from some amazing investors who see our vision to make indoor location ever-present in built spaces.  BDC Capital led this investment through their Women in Tech fund. This is one of the world's largest VC funds dedicated to women-led technology companies, and it is committed to investing $200 million over the next five years. We're excited to have their support.  Check out the press release below to find out more about our funding and how we're working with Fortune 500 companies around the world. 

 One of the questions we often get here at InnerSpace is why did we create our own sensor, why not use beacons? It’s a great question…

Companies that provide engaging workplaces are rewarded with happy, productive employees. There is no doubt that how and where we work is changing. The evolution of the modern workplace is being driven by demographics, the growing gig economy, and technology trends that are making smart buildings even smarter. Helping to push the changes forward even faster are companies we call workplace innovators. From global brands like IBM, Microsoft and LinkedIn to Alley, a leader in the emerging area of co-working office services, these organizations offer workplace solutions that lead the way in helping people to do their best work. IBM, for example, has embraced co-working and occupies an entire WeWork building in downtown Manhattan for 600 employees.

Indoor location data and IoT applications are revolutionizing how commercial real estate is managed to reduce operating costs and improve tenant experiences. The “smart buildings” of a decade ago look practically antique when compared to commercial real estate today. In the past, networked HVAC systems and single-building management systems helped lower operating costs. It was about being “green.” But nowadays, building managers and tenants expect more value from facilities management solutions.

Smart technology used inside smart buildings can eliminate wasted time and improve collaboration. But it also engages employees by providing better workplace experiences. Organizations that take productivity seriously, know smarter machines are key to unlocking greater returns from human capital. So says Michael Schrage, a prolific author on the subject of innovation and a research fellow at the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business. We agree: smart technology enables people to work smarter and more efficiently. Applied in a smart building context, it gives people tools to carve out the time and space they need for their work within a busy office setting.

How workplaces and workspaces are changing to meet the needs of a mobile, connected workforce.

PRESS RELEASE: INNERSPACE HELPS TO ELIMINATE THE WAIT!

The InnerSpace sensor is the first of its kind in the IoT/indoor location market. It captures a massive amount of data including location, positioning, and 3D data so that we can provide businesses with traffic metrics, patterns, and predictive modelling. This data - and its fancy math - mean we can use the information to fundamentally change how buildings operate and how people work.

The number of businesses undertaking Smart Building initiatives is growing. So it’s no surprise that the Smart Buildings market is expected to hit $31.74 billion by 2022. There are a multitude of benefits - driving down utility costs, reducing unused real estate foot print, improving employee productivity, and more. We’ve only just scratched the surface.

In 2017, Forbes cited this study, stating that “happy employees are 20% more productive than unhappy employees”. It further stated that stock prices of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work for" rose 14% per year from 1998 to 2005, while companies not on the list only reported a 6% increase.

Today we introduced the full InnerSpace platform - sensors, inFINITY, and workplace solutions - designed to improve business operations. Indoor location to-date, has largely been focused on wayfinding and retail marketing, but we know the technology has bigger ambitions. 

Location-based technology has played a vital role in changing the way we operate. With Google Maps and Waze, the days of people walking or driving around with paper maps are almost gone. People can travel to a foreign place or country with fewer worries about getting lost. New customers can find businesses and services anywhere in the world. Furthermore, location mapping has helped create new business models like Uber, Tinder and Pokemon Go.

You could think about labor and real estate as your highest business costs. Or, you could think of them as your biggest assets. Indoor location can unlock that potential to improve your operations and create new products and services. 

Startup life is notorious for the ups, downs and curveballs. One of the best ways we've been able to remain steadfast throughout is by working with incredible incubators. Over the last two years we've worked with 500 Startups, the IBM Innovation Space, and most recently Creative Destruction Lab. 

In December, Apple excited mobile tech enthusiasts and frequent flyers by introducing its airport navigation feature. Available for a select number of airports around the world, the solution combines maps and indoor positioning technology to show users where they are, what’s around them, and how to get where they need to go.

Indoor maps and location data has never been so in-demand. In sectors as varied as retail, health care, and warehousing and logistics, decision-makers are recognizing the incredible value this information provides. Applications include wayfinding, labour optimization, asset tracking, and more.

For those who don’t work in rescue services, it’s not always clear what to do in an emergency. But there’s one action that’s ingrained in all of us: call 911.

At InnerSpace, the applications for indoor mapping and location data never cease to amaze us. The last year was full of new discoveries—and opportunities. We’ve evolved, achieving a more complete understanding of our users and the value of our technology.

What’s the first thing you picture when you hear the words “campus dining?” For many, the answer is long line-ups and bland food.

For any company, committing to an office space is a big decision. The selection and design process demands a lot from incoming tenants. Luckily, recent innovation can simplify the steps involved.

The demand for warehouse space has exploded in recent years as eCommerce continues to grow. But it's not just about the space. Customer expectations have evolved, which means warehouses need to operate more efficiently and extend services that reflect the customer journey. Often, this means embracing innovation and establishing new processes quickly.

On the surface, the retail crisis seems relatively simple. The rise in eCommerce has eliminated the costly real estate, staffing, inventory and franchising issues that plagues brick-and-mortar stores. Analysts cite overstocking, a lack of brand loyalty, and declining foot traffic as the leading causes of declining in-store sales.  It isn’t a pretty picture.

In 1998, a group of healthcare professionals stood in front of a map of the hospital where they worked. They unspooled a ball of blue yarn, and used it to trace the path that a typical cancer patient would take to receive chemotherapy.

The merits of Slack are many. Making business decisions quickly, increasing transparency, sharing information - and building your culture. One day a great discovery was made. Our CTO Matt posted a photo of his rather large cat. This quickly devolved into a cat-sharing stream and we discovered that everyone at InnerSpace is a cat person - that's right, we're bucking the dog-friendly-startup trend and making it official. We are cat people. 

This is "Johnny." He's the InnerSpace Sensor that digitizes indoor spaces - instantly and in real-time. Using WiFi, Bluetooth, LiDAR and a variety of other technologies, when combined with our proprietary algorithms, Johnny is a powerful solution that:

Deloitte recently released their 16th edition of Predictions for the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) sectors that included their predictions for indoor navigation. As a technology company focused on cracking the code that enables this market to scale, Deloitte's thoughts are a strong proof point we are on the right track.

InnerSpace is gaining momentum to drive a fundamental shift in the way that people experience, understand, and create their indoor spaces.

We’re thrilled to let you know that InnerSpace has been selected by 500 Startups to join its next cohort. For the next few months we’ll be down in the Valley making new connections, exploring its grey matter, and enjoying the vitamin D.

InnerSpace showcased the future of commercial real estate technology with other industry leaders during the CRETech New York symposium this past Thursday evening. Event host CRETech is a information firm committed to being the best source of emerging and innovative commercial real estate technology. Over 30 technology firms attended the event hosted at One World Trade Centre, 63 floors above beautiful New York City.

The saying ‘work is something you do, rather than a place you go’ is ringing increasingly true for many of us, particularly for those who work in office-based roles in the service sector. In fact, research by the TUC based on ONS data suggests that 4.2 million of us, or 13.7% of the workforce, now regularly work from home and another 1.8 million people would like to do so given the opportunity.

We are thrilled to be part of the Plug and Play IoT and Health accelerator program in Silicon Valley and welcome you to join us on June 23 for our pitch and demo at Plug and Play's Internet of Things and Health & Wellness EXPO. We will be one of nearly 40 of the most disruptive startups in Silicon Valley.

Behind the black tarps that cover its entrance, construction workers with drills, hammers and paintbrushes in-hand work furiously to put the finishing touches on Saks Fifth Avenue’s first Canadian location.

Reposted from The Huffington Post

Imagine you could use your Smartphone to figure out where you are and search for where you want to go when you're indoors. That was the message to consumers back in 2010 when it was announced that indoor maps were arriving to our phones. 

Low capital cost, low operational cost, high location accuracy. With beacon-based indoor location, you get to pick only 2.

“Indoor location technology has been around for a while. What new problem are you solving?”

While there is a lot of spending on IOT technologies to help retailers build the stores of the future, the lack of a single, turn-key product prohibits any solution from scaling across a retail chain. That is why we still can not use our Smartphone to find products in a store despite the significant efforts by retailers to deliver this desired experience. We believe the platform that can deliver on that experience MUST be turn-key and have the flexibility to enable use-cases far in to the future.

At InnerSpace, we’re on a mission to digitize the indoor world and enrich every interaction inside. For the past year, we’ve been busy building a new platform built on our network of devices for mapping indoors. Today, we're ready to share what we've been working on!