In the building materials sector, where physical products meet demanding timelines, innovation isn’t just about what you make. It’s about how efficiently all your teams can collaborate.
Owens Corning, a global leader in building materials known for its commitment to innovation and sustainability, faced the universal industry challenge: how to both secure critical content and accelerate the adoption of AI technologies in order to get to market faster and beat the competition.
Global CIO Annie Baymiller spoke at BoxWorks 2025 about Owens Corning’s approach to AI: “We’re starting to look at complete process transformation — how do we become AI first? How do we prepare the company for future growth and productivity? The combination of AI agents and automation is going to be really powerful.”
- Owens Corning created a “safe space” for employees to experiment with AI by leaning into Box Hubs, which allowed for cross-organizational collaboration
- Internal AI fairs allowed employees to get hands on with demonstrating and learning from each other’s ideas
- Ideas spread faster and employees get practical work done more efficiently with Box AI
Scaling innovation while managing complexity
Owens Corning’s journey into Intelligent Content Management began with a vision to empower every employee to safely explore new ideas while leveraging powerful tools. But traditional approaches to information management had created data silos that stifled collaboration and slowed the adoption of AI. Multiple different content tools and systems also made it hard for teams working on similar challenges to share what they learned.
Leadership wanted to encourage AI experimentation, but without clear guidelines or easy-to-use collaborative tools for AI projects, many good ideas got stuck or forgotten. All of this slowed progress and made it harder to move quickly.
Getting employees excited about AI was crucial, but Owens Corning first needed a safe space for different cohorts to experiment. And in general, the company needed a better platform to manage vast amounts of unstructured data across global operations.
Making AI work for everyone
Box provided the perfect combination of content capabilities: strong security with built-in AI features and access to tools like Box Hubs, which enabled Owens Corning’s teams to easily aggregate and curate content as well as apply AI to specific groups of files. Teams working on similar projects can now share and organize content without switching between multiple apps. “Box Hubs have been a perfect fit for us,” Baymiller explains. “Teams looking at similar data can now organize it together easily.”
Building on the ability to organize content and apply intelligence to it in the same place, one of the ways Owens Corning encouraged collaboration and experimentation with Box AI was by creating AI fairs. Employees were invited to show off their creative AI ideas and learn from each other. “Picture it as a seventh-grade science fair,” says Baymiller. “We set it up for a couple of hours. It was fun to walk through and have people demonstrate their ideas.”
This grassroots approach to innovation would not have been possible without the secure, flexible platform Box gave the company. People now have the tools to explore AI ideas safely while still maintaining enterprise-level security.
Connecting teams and ideas with Intelligent Content Management
Since implementing Box AI, Owens Corning has seen ideas spread faster and employees get work done more efficiently.
“Box Hubs have been a sweet spot for us in terms of how cohorts of folks, who need to be looking at similar data, start to curate it together,” confirms Baymiller. “And then, the search on top of it is far more sophisticated.”
Box Hubs have been a sweet spot for us in terms of how cohorts of folks, who need to be looking at similar data, start to curate it together. And then, the search on top of it is far more sophisticated.
With Box Hubs and Box AI, teams can now find what they need quickly. While Owens Corning is still measuring the full impact of these efforts, early results show employees are more engaged — and saving time on routine tasks like summarizing data and checking accuracy.
Baymiller sees huge potential in creating a connected system where AI handles routine work automatically within the tools people already use. This will mean far less jumping between apps and much faster work for everyone. She calls this partnership “a total game changer” as Box continues expanding its automation capabilities.
What other leaders can learn from Owens Corning
Companies that produce building materials have to innovate quickly or succumb to the competition — and that applies not just to the products they make but the tools they use to get work done every day.
Baymiller’s advice for other technology leaders hoping to move the needle on AI: “Create a technical environment that’s safe and secure and has all the guardrails around it. Make sure the rules of the playing are known, so that we can all sleep well at night knowing the sandbox is safe.”
Beyond content security, Baymiller’s focus is on creating a cultural environment that celebrates ideation in every corner of the company. She is proud to say “Our journey so far has been a groundswell of ideas.”
