Conclusions

A review of our primary findings leads to the following conclusions:

Technology trends and limits: The networking, hardware and software technology to support collaborative applications, is mostly here today and is constantly evolving with time. However, the absence of high-bandwidth symmetric network access to homes may ultimately stunt the growth of the industry if not available in the next decade, since we believe that telecommuting is one of the chief markets that will help in burgeoning this technology in the near- to medium-term.
Economic Factors: Significant economic benefits are being realized by companies (eg AT&T, Heineken, etc.) implementing collaborative technologies, although there are challenges in accurately calculating all the benefits. In the near term, however, most applications of the technology will be intra-firm because of network effects and the lack of standards.
Industrial Organization and Business Strategy: The challenges of organizational change are tremendous. Organizations must make sure their culture, incentive systems, and structure are adapted to the new dynamics of a more collaborative world. These changes will require effective training and communication throughout the entire organization, as well as changing management styles and more flexible managerial attitudes.

The interplay of the above mentioned factors suggests that collaborative technologies will develop in two phases.

Collaborative technologies will first develop in niche markets for use within a single organization. These organizations will utilize existing collaborative technologies across intranets to recognize significant benefits in the form of cost savings, increased productivity, and improved quality. They will struggle through difficult organizational changes, but emerge well-positioned to take advantage of the benefits of collaboration. We investigated three such niche markets in our case studies:

Corporate training: The future of corporate training using collaborative multimedia technologies is very bright. Commercial enterprises have long been early adopters of innovative technologies to support their training activities. The economic rationale and the technology has been demonstrated in numerous settings. Real-time corporate training activities have significantly reduced overall training costs while enhancing student retention rates. As the costs of infrastructure and tools decline, the capabilities of the tools increase. While there still remain some technical and human interaction issues, we expect that innovative third party vendors and system integrators will address these remaining issues over the coming years. We expect corporate distance training through collaborative interactive multimedia to undergo widespread adoption in the next five years.
Distance education: Distance learning has long been recognized as an important form of education. The advances in real-time multimedia technologies have made it even more attractive, by enhancing the interaction and learning process. While it is still costly to deploy the infrastructure to support distance learning, the economic benefits will outweigh the cost in the long run.
Telecommuting: We found that there are strong economic incentives for the adoption of collaborative technologies in the telecommuting sector. The benefits of telecommuting include increased productivity, reduced real estate and facility costs, labor pool expansion, and flexible working hours coupled with improved employee quality of life. However, despite these advantages and technology capabilities, telecommuting is not a done deal. Managerial and executive support, and changes in management styles are crucial to the success of telecommuting programs in any organization.

Future outlook: Wider adoption will require the identification of well-defined markets and will begin to involve increased collaboration between multiple organizations. As the technology matures and network capabilities increase, organizations will increasingly look outside their walls for opportunities to realize the economic benefits of collaboration. Where there is economic value, the technologies and new processes will develop naturally and without the need for government intervention.

Collaborative planning: As the network develops and companies adapt to a more collaborative environment, organizations will build on what companies like Heineken have begun. They will develop highly collaborative relationships with suppliers and industrial customers that provide economic value to all participants.
Shared virtual worlds: These will only develop if there is economic or social value to be derived from it. If this value exists, it will definitely require the development of a ubiquitous network infrastructure that can support high-bandwidth applications. In addition, to bring DVEs closer to reality, we must be able to combine the efforts of the networking and distributed interactive simulation communities, leveraging the networking expertise of one and the graphics and user-interface expertise of the other. This is an issue of industrial organization and partnership.

The described evolution makes intuitive sense. Organizations are going to need the time to adapt to their new structure before they can effectively collaborate with others. During this time the technology can mature, standards can develop, and a more symmetric high bandwidth network can be established to support the technology. The result will be an environment better prepared for sophisticated, real-time inter-organizational collaboration and the host of new organizational issues presented by it. We feel confident this trend will develop, but it will be driven by organizational needs to gain economic advantage through increased collaboration. Successful collaborative technologies will develop around well-defined markets that provide economic value; the rest will unfortunately go the way of the Macintosh.

Bibliography

Future Outlook

Contents