Thursday, September 03, 2009
Collaboration Tools at Procter and Cisco
A good overview of the use of collaboration tools in big enterprises.. Object to combine the intellectual property of the entire enterprise. Mostly about the low end IM, and high end telepresence. Little about knowledge management in the middle where many more could benefit from it.
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4 comments:
Don't see a link in the post.
Yes, sorry, will fix shortly.
article here until I get to correct:
http://mobile.computerworld.com/device/article.php?mid=1&CALL_URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerworld.com%2Faction%2Farticle.do%3Fcommand%3DviewArticleBasic%26articleId%3D9137435
Thanks- have been following Cisco's public efforts off and on-- Chambers has a visible promotional platform. A couple things I often see missing from the discussion:
1) While I agree with the value of video conferencing, and Cisco has done a nice job internally apparently of capturing a strategic market, much of the collaboration discussion is strategic to Cisco's other businesses that dominate their balance sheet-- something customers should be aware of, particularly relating to interoperable standards in the future.
2) Collaboration is all the rage in global organizations, which is warranted-- without it large orgs go nowhere, most have overlooked the key issue with innovation, and particularly invention. They cannot see well (with few exceptions-- Ballmer actually sees this better than most-- he's had more red flags perhaps) that their cultures are very heavily tilted towards borrowing than creating-- it's a systemic problem in our socialized culture that begins in school with the majority never exiting that culture.
So collaboration is key to taking products to market, but as the P&G exec correctly points out-- it's all about the people, all of whom are individuals first and foremost, before they are a team, particularly in this global hyper competitive environment. Managers who forget that do so at their own peril-- aligning the interests between individuals /teams / organizations is essential-- the core of my work for 15 years now.
Without overcoming that issue in the digital workplace environment, the integrity of all other data should be seriously questioned, including analytics. We could not have asked for a richer set of case studies than in the past decade- dotcom bubble, 9/11, Katrina, the housing bubble and financial crisis, product failures at Detroit, education system...healthcare.... P&G and Cisco indeed appear exceptional given other industries of late, but so far they still appear a bit behind the times- not in video technology, but in what's currently possible in the digital workplace environment. Good stuff- .02- MM
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