Despite Innate Needs, Real-Time Collaboration Stalling

In Real-Time Collaboration Has Stalled...for Now, Alex Williams offers an insightful editorial on a study by Forrester on The State of Technology Adoption. The post includes two charts that highlight survey findings. Key points are:

• Dominant use of email is the biggest challenge to real-time collaboration. We presented a similar view in an earlier post, Email: A Barrier to Effective Collaboration?.
• Information workers do not really use tools such as web-conferencing, instant messaging and video-conferencing. We surmise that familiarity with email leading to its domination and slow adoption of new technologies are the underlying reasons.
• Innate needs for collaboration are present. Knowledge workers use traditional means of communication and collaboration; thus, the uptake of technologies for effective collaboration remains low. One means of traditional and effective collaboration to fulfill the innate needs is highlighted in From the Strange File: Smoking Can Improve Collaboration.

Alex recommends better online training, since self-help is popular among knowledge-workers.

Definitions of real-time collaboration abound; here is one definition of real-time collaboration.

Update on 24 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

See Related Posts:

• Assessing the State of Collaboration: Return to Essentials
• Open Letter to Collaboration Tool Providers
• The Collaboration Tool "Tipping Point"?
• Long Shadows of Collaboration Tools
• A Taxonomy of Collaboration Tools