IBM and Ricoh combine to create world’s smartest whiteboard
Ricoh and IBM are working together to create a new interactive whiteboard to transform collaboration in meeting rooms. Using IBM’s advanced Watson cognitive and voice recognition technology, our easy-to-use interactive whiteboard becomes an active meeting participant that responds to voice commands, takes notes and actions and even translates into other languages
Ricoh and IBM are developing this new innovative solution to help free employees from the problems of managing agendas, visualising ideas and communicating across boundaries.
Why else use a Cognitive Whiteboard?
- The benefits of face-to-face meetings are being lost as technology promotes remote working
- Companies waste huge amounts of time and money through inefficient or redundant meetings*
- Executives spend nearly 50% of their time in meetings*
- An estimated 34% of meeting time does not add value*
- Companies struggle to capitalise on the small amounts of knowledge they capture
- Even with meeting notes and actions, almost 90% of all meeting information is lost when the meeting is over*
- Tremendous amounts of knowledge are lost as employees retire or leave for other jobs
IBM is installing more than 80 Ricoh interactive whiteboards in its new global Watson IoT headquarters in Munich, Germany. This will enable IBM’s product development teams in Munich to hold productive meetings with fellow employees as well as partners and customers in other locations like Japan, Brazil and the U.S., with everyone seeing the critical notes in their own language.
This is an important first step in improving meeting productivity. Watson’s capability for learning will enable a range of more complex smart meeting support functions in the future.
*Source: IBM Internet of Things blog