Lenovo

BUILDING BELIEf in the brand

AGENCY
Gensler

CLIENT
Lenovo Group Ltd.

PROJECT
New US Headquarter Facility Design & Implementation in Research Triangle Park/Morrisville, NC

MY ROLE
Primary Client Development, Strategic Lead of Branded Workplace Concept & Creative Director. Development of materials for empowering Lenovo senior management & employees as brand ambassadors.

OVERVIEW
Acquiring IBM’s Personal Computing Division for $1.25b in 2005, including its most high profile ThinkPad brand notebooks, reflected Lenovo’s new consumer-centric strategy toward providing high-quality products, world-class service & innovation to the global market. Already claiming one-third of the world’s PC market in China alone, & the fastest growing one, Lenovo was poised to continue growth in all categories it competed in, including: mobile handsets, servers, peripherals & digital entertainment products.

Backing up these intentions, it announced its US headquarters move to Research Triangle Park near Raleigh, NC, with commitment toward developing 350,000 sf –three 5-story buildings- devoted to office, conference, cafeteria, open-plan break out areas & outdoor space for its 3,500 employees, as well as visitors. In addition, Lenovo would develop a 13,000 sf global destination Innovation Center designed to be a hands on product development facility, staffed by engineers, programmers, product developers, & sales-marketing professionals to collaborate on multi-day projects with customers throughout the world. Supported by a combined partnership of Intel, IBM, LANDesk, Microsoft & Symantec, this Raleigh-based Lenovo Innovation Center was intended to become an incubator –for designing, creating, validating & deploying new personal computing solutions well into decades to come.

OUTCOMES
Six months after the Innovation Center official opening, it was honored with one of only two prestigious ‘World Class’ status awards by the Association of Briefing Program Managers’ (ABPM) annual competition, eclipsing nominations from others including: AT&T, 3M, IBM & Microsoft -- recognized by the judges specifically for its innovative design, leading edge technologies, customer experience & clear messaging. In 2012, Lenovo was recognized as the world’s second largest PC company, & announced a 70,000sf expansion of the Raleigh headquarters, continuing to create a rich ecosystem of hardware-based products, now including software, to broaden its portfolio & further differentiate itself in the market --more recently, in 2015, Lenovo was recognized as the #3 smartphone vendor in China & #4 globally.

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