Miro
Miro: Capitalizing on the Shift to Remote Work with a Digital Whiteboard
Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard, saw its growth skyrocket as it became an essential tool for remote and hybrid teams needing to replicate the creativity of in-person workshops.
The shift to remote work created a major gap in the collaboration toolkit. Teams lost the ability to brainstorm, ideate, and plan visually using physical whiteboards and sticky notes. Video conferencing was great for talking, but not for creative, visual collaboration.
Miro provided an infinite digital canvas that perfectly replicated and enhanced the physical whiteboard experience. It offered tools like digital sticky notes, diagrams, voting, and timers, along with a rich library of templates for common workshops like retrospectives, user story mapping, and brainstorming. Its real-time, multiplayer nature made it feel like everyone was in the same room.
Miro became indispensable for remote product teams, designers, and consultants. Its adoption soared during the COVID-19 pandemic as companies scrambled for tools to support remote work. It established itself as a leader in the new category of "visual collaboration."
- Solve a problem created by a major technological or societal shift.
- Replicate a beloved physical workflow in a digital format, then enhance it.
- Templates can dramatically lower the barrier to entry for complex workflows.
- Being in the right place at the right time is powerful, but only if you have the right product.
Miro's success demonstrates the importance of being prepared for major market shifts. By building a product that solved a latent problem for distributed teams, they were perfectly positioned to capitalize on the global, sudden shift to remote work.