Collaboration is, in most cases, a good thing. But when it's done poorly, it can be an expensive proposition.
Let's look at the positives. Collaboration can save time and money. It can keep travel and telecommunications costs down. It allows an easy exchange of ideas. It makes it easier for people in different time zones to work together. Good examples of collaboration surround us: we have multiple authors of this blog; no two editors in this EarthWeb channel are in the same physical space; Lennon and McCartney.
As for the negatives: people weren't designed to collaborate and share information. Many enterprises make collaboration investments a departmental decision, which not only means there can be numerous collaboration platforms, but restricts who can collaborate. Many people collaborate via e-mail, which is a horrible collaboration tool. Bad examples of collaboration also surround us. Hall and Oates, to name just one.
There are more collaboration options than ever. There are collaborative workspaces, blogs, wikis, audio and video conferences, and whiteboards. But this doesn't even begin to touch on how many choices there are, as explained in this article on
how to select collaboration tools from IT World Canada.
There are close to 1,000 vendors in the collaboration market, according to David Coleman, managing director of Collaborative Strategies LLC in San Francisco. "There are way too many vendors," he says. Coleman projects that sales of collaboration software, services and related hardware will reach $40 billion in 2008, with an average annual growth rate of 13 percent.
Thanks to
Michael Sampson for the link.
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