Saturday, October 14, 2006
It's Collaboration, Stupid.
“An awful lot of people find each other on the Net, form communities, and create user-generated content. The next generation of leaps in technology will come from the fact that people are always connected and sharing information. Somebody says I’ve invented this, another says I’ve invented that, and they connect. The acceleration is going to be breathtaking.”
Dr Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google
Collaboration is the way to accelerate success. Recently I have been looking into the Broadband future. Either by free market or Governmental decree (or a combination of both) this future will become a reality. In some markets it already is. And the interesting thing is that a greater bandwidth will certainly accelerate collaboration.
Collaboration has four aspects (and the pre-Broadband crises):
- emotion of discussion (text alone cannot convey all meaning and value)
- context (difficult to share work and virtual documents)
- action (lack of context doesn't create action. Need to integrate communication and delivery)
- location (problems of remoteness, physical location)
Broadband and a greater bandwidth can deliver against these current crises. Virtual (emotion and action improves). Messaging (context). Wireless and Wi-Fi (location).
This is no small matter. I see a number of immediate manifestations of this:
- Virtual qualitative. Even allowing the key moderators to extend their reach across more Focus Groups thereby driving quality and insight through collaboration
- Greater reconception. The ability to bring people together in new and different ways over an extended period of time leads to greater creativity. A greater discovery. Moving from right first time, to right much more quickly.
Is that not what we need for New Product Development and research?
"In a few years, (men) will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face" (Licklider and Taylor) The computer as a communication device, (1968)
Dr Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google
Collaboration is the way to accelerate success. Recently I have been looking into the Broadband future. Either by free market or Governmental decree (or a combination of both) this future will become a reality. In some markets it already is. And the interesting thing is that a greater bandwidth will certainly accelerate collaboration.
Collaboration has four aspects (and the pre-Broadband crises):
- emotion of discussion (text alone cannot convey all meaning and value)
- context (difficult to share work and virtual documents)
- action (lack of context doesn't create action. Need to integrate communication and delivery)
- location (problems of remoteness, physical location)
Broadband and a greater bandwidth can deliver against these current crises. Virtual (emotion and action improves). Messaging (context). Wireless and Wi-Fi (location).
This is no small matter. I see a number of immediate manifestations of this:
- Virtual qualitative. Even allowing the key moderators to extend their reach across more Focus Groups thereby driving quality and insight through collaboration
- Greater reconception. The ability to bring people together in new and different ways over an extended period of time leads to greater creativity. A greater discovery. Moving from right first time, to right much more quickly.
Is that not what we need for New Product Development and research?
"In a few years, (men) will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face" (Licklider and Taylor) The computer as a communication device, (1968)
