Forrester study of 3700 knowledge workers in the US and Europe on Building the Future of Collaboration concludes that knowledge workers still heavily rely on the e-mail and the telephone to collaborate. Adoption of new technologies and tools is painfully slow. Forrester writes, “respondents hope tomorrow will be similar, but better.”

Key findings of the study are:

• Collaboration abound: 80% of respondents collaborate every month with colleagues in remote locations and 67% with partners from other companies.
• Email rules: Email supports 77% of this collaborative work. Other asynchronous collaboration tools (collaboration portals, discussion forums) come behind at 17%. “Web 2.0” tools (Wikis, Blogs, Social networks) don’t reach even 5%.
• Professionals want improvements, but no radical change: They would rather keep the same tools. Top areas for improvement: speed and efficiency of collaboration at 68%, and the fluidity of the exchange of information and ideas at 62%.

Not surprisingly, email continues to be the barrier for more effective collaboration. Perhaps the message for bringing about change for adoption of effective collaboration tools is to kill email.

If you do not wish to sign up to get the full study, summary of the report can be found at: Studies delve into the future of collaboration and Forrester: Building the Future of Collaboration, among many other places.