Making Space For An Important Team Member: Our Indy HQ

2021 has shown to be quite the year of growth for Innovatemap in who we serve and who we are. We sit today with 64 percent growth in our team size, growing from 22 to 36 people since January. The way in which we collaborate and deliver our services to clients looks different.

And we’re having a lot of fun.

As our team grows to accommodate these exciting changes, one crucial but silent team member needed attention.

Our Indianapolis office space. 

Since arriving at our headquarters office in Broad Ripple in 2018, we’ve gone through several iterations of our home. We have one of the longest whiteboard walls in the city. And in many of these phases, conference rooms and open collaboration spaces were key. 

As Ally Inglis (Experience & Operations Manager) said, “we’re a creative agency. We learn and grow together, and we derive energy from being together. So when COVID first happened, we spent a lot of time thinking and talking about what we could do. Not only to make people feel safe and comfortable but to keep that creative energy alive.”

Today, we’ve pushed our space toward a new kind of collaboration, where hybrid work opportunities are more attainable and where every space in our headquarters is adaptable to the team’s needs. Keep reading to see a look inside our evolving home and to understand how we’re keeping all we cherish about cooperation at the center. 

A commitment to clarity

Our CEO Mike Reynolds saw firsthand how our team’s needs changed through the pandemic. In 2020, we grew a client base outside Indianapolis until nearly half of our partners were not local. 

More remote clients, but few spaces dedicated to making virtual meetings successful, posed a challenge to us in having enough private rooms for key meetings. As this reality unfolded, what our leaders understood was the team wanted to be in the office. But the limitations of the space created too many barriers. 

Layered on top of these limits was our company’s continued growth. In early 2021, we added new team members and looked forward to hiring more. More people in the office meant more schedules to coordinate, upping the need to tweak what people expect from our office. 

For Mike, clarity—made possible with a commitment to transparency, conviction, and speed to a decision—was the number-one goal as we dreamed up what was next for our space. 

“Being in person isn’t an imperative for us, but it is an accelerator,” Mike said. “So what we did early was declare this belief, and our team rallied around it.” 

The path forward 

From this reflection, we knew we needed to stay nimble with our space and adjust to the company’s growth trajectory. We started by finding local partners, Inherent Commercial & DKGR, and began making tweaks in April 2021. One by one, we committed to several decisions:

• Whether it’s an individual call with a client or a three-hour solo design session, quiet spaces are necessary to help our team do their best work. But we needed more room for this in our open environment. So we took a sledgehammer to an old conference room on the second floor to create a new hallway with three individual working rooms, College 201, 202, and 203. We then added rooms to our third floor where our team members can take private calls and get in the flow while designing, researching, and more. 

• Our agency still thrives on bringing our clients to our working space for meetings. But with the pandemic and the scope of our new clients, this isn’t always possible. Enter Zoom rooms. As part of the tweaks to our office, we added high-quality webcams and sound bars to rooms to support groups meeting with remote clients. 

• We assessed unused space at HQ and optimized it so that on the days we’re together, we can make the most of impromptu conversations. Part of this included converting a dead corner of our second floor into a dedicated meeting room. Separated by a sliding door and storefront window, this new area helps our internal teams bring their minds together in the company of natural light and comfortable, open seating.  

• We continued to embrace the flair only Broad Ripple can provide. All our spaces, large and small, pay homage to the neighborhood that put Innovatemap on the map, with names such as Kessler, SoBro, and Monon. This recent restructuring included a few new additions. A space that previously was one room named College became three small rooms with the names College 201, 202 and 203. A new team space on the 3rd floor is now named 317. And that fancy new room with the storefront window? We named it Winthrop to honor the nearby street. 

What we learned 

No two days at Innovatemap are the same. And today, our office is primed to support our team for their range of needs. As our world evolves and workplaces change how they operate, we’ve committed to our guiding star: The belief that an office should adapt to our people, and not the other way around.