• Cisco’s WebEx Acquisition

    Social networking has attracted the attention of traditional media, bloggers, venture capitalists and others. But there is confusion about the relationship between social networking and collaboration. As Cisco acquires WebEx for $3.2 billion in cash, let’s clear the air.

    Social networking has two components: productivity and play. The term collaboration usually refers to productivity and the creation of value rather than play. However, there are distinct parallels. Whether we’re playing networked multiplayer games or we’re using a networked 3D modeling application to design a car or produce digital effects for movies, we are still collaborating in real time. Whether we’re writing a wiki about chess or microprocessor design, we’re still collaborating asynchronously.

    Cisco has already made social networking investments focused on play and consumer communities, namely Tribe.net and Five Across. Acquiring WebEx, with its more than 28,000 customers and over 2 million registered users, plunges Cisco deeper into productivity and business-oriented collaboration. Cisco’s broader strategy is to use the network as a platform for consumer and business applications and services.

    Some of the coverage of the acquisition requires clarification. The San Francisco Chronicle called WebEx the “leader in videoconferencing” in a story in today’s business section. Actually, WebEx is the leader in web conferencing or what the company prefers to call the “collaboration services market.” Video can be used as an add-on, but most WebEx conferences are one-to-many presentations without video rather than truly interactive sessions. Now that Cisco will drive WebEx, video will undoubtedly play a bigger role. Clearly, the acquisition sets the stage for Cisco to challenge Microsoft in the collaboration services arena.

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  • Mirror Zones for Collaboration

    Mirror zones are time zones that are opposite or nearly opposite. It’s a term I coined in The Culture of Collaboration book. The term has much relevance for collaboration.

    Using mirror zones, companies can compress product cycle time and time-to-market by creating a near 24-hour product development and design environment. When team members in one time zone sleep, their colleagues in the mirror zone work. Collaboration between the mirror zones happens in real time during the shift overlap and asynchronously the rest of the time. Mirror zones can create value in industries including aerospace, automotive, consumer products, healthcare, pharmaceutical, digital effects, advertising and many others.

    In the book, I write about how Boeing is successfully using mirror zones to design the 787 Dreamliner. I also write about how BMW leveraged time zones and set up mirror organizations when engineers were designing the X5. Beyond manufacturing, mirror zones can create substantial value in the service sector.

    Collaboration tools—both real time and asynchronous—are key enablers of mirror zones. But it takes more than tools for mirror zones to work. Bridging cultures is key.

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  • Qwaq Exits Stealth Mode with Immersive, Real-Time Collaboration

    In a modest building next to a burrito shop in downtown Palo Alto, California, the next generation of collaboration is taking shape. When I stepped into the cramped offices of Qwaq last week, CEO Greg Nuyens greeted me immediately because there’s no receptionist yet. The company is running on seed money and is exploring options for the next round of financing—and Qwaq clearly has many options. Greg, VP of enterprise Remy Malan and I then headed for the makeshift conference room for a demo.

    Greg and Remy sat at separate PC’s. On screen, they were each represented by avatars in a shared virtual 3D office environment. This virtual space displayed cubicles, walls, plants, pictures and the like. When Greg passed his mouse to me, I was able to drag and drop any document, spreadsheet, or any other file from the hard drive onto any part of the 3D virtual office environment. Remy and I could move around the office, travel through doors and hallways, meet in a virtual conference room and work in any application on a virtual white board. Or we could take our work to the virtual break room or the front lawn of the virtual building.

    Unlike many web conferencing applications which are geared for presentations or passing the baton back-and-forth, Qwaq is optimized for true real-time, spontaneous collaboration. But Qwaq is a hybrid in that it also enables asynchronous collaboration. Unlike most traditional web conferencing which works only while a session is underway, Qwaq Forums is persistent. This means authorized users can access the virtual space any time. Team members in another time zone may wake up to find the results of real-time collaboration that occurred while they were sleeping.

    Today Qwaq emerges from stealth mode. For months Qwaq has been fielding inquiries from savvy enterprise engineers and executives who have drawn conclusions about Qwaq’s development work based on the team. Computing pioneer Alan Kay is advising Qwaq. Kay’s work at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) contributed to the development of both the laptop computer and the overlapping windows interface. Also advising Qwaq is David Reed, former chief scientist of Lotus.

    Qwaq’s team includes substantial talent in highly-scalable, distributed systems. Founder and CTO David Smith is a 3D pioneer and chief system architect of Croquet. CEO Greg Nuyens was the chief technologist at Inktomi and CEO of Instant802, backed by VC firms August Capital and Kleiner Perkins. Remy Malan, the vice president of enterprise, was the VP of marketing at AtWeb.

    Qwaq is bringing the work of The Croquet Consortium to the enterprise. Croquet is an open source development environment for creating large-scale, networked 3D collaborative spaces. Qwaq allows resource and computation sharing among large numbers of users on multiple platforms and devices.

    The most compelling aspect of Qwaq is that it creates new collaboration possibilities and methods.

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  • Learning Collaboration from Toyota

    There is something missing from the innumerable stories about Toyota that fill the pages of newspapers, business magazines and leadership journals. Rarely do these stories mention one of the key reasons for Toyota’s success: collaboration.

    In researching The Culture of Collaboration book, I visited Toyota facilities and explored how collaboration has created substantial value for Toyota and other leading organizations. I had discussions with people throughout the company including Japan-based executives, U.S.-based executives, plant managers, learning and development people, and team members who assemble cars. The book describes how Toyota, among other companies, elegantly extends its collaborative culture through tools including videoconferencing and product lifecycle management.

    Mike Morrison, dean of the University of Toyota, provided valuable perspective on many issues including how cross-functional collaboration enhances product development and manufacturing. Mike is quoted in a story in Monday’s Wall Street Journal headlined “Toyota University Opens Admissions to Outsiders.” Based in Gardena, California, the University trains Toyota employees in its business philosophy and instills principles including nemawashi (consensus-building), kaizen (continuous improvement) and yokoten (moving knowledge around the organization).

    One of the University of Toyota’s clients is the Los Angeles Police Department’s jails, according to the story. And what better test of how to turn a command-and-control culture into a collaborative one! The relationship reportedly began after Mike volunteered to help at an officer training meeting. Subsequently, the University of Toyota helped the LA jails team develop breakthrough solutions to several persistent problems.  If police supervisors can become collaborative, perhaps even the most hierarchical, star-oriented corporate culture can shift to the Culture of Collaboration.

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  • Presence, Collaboration and Jeff Raikes’ Prediction

    Connecting with people can be complicated. We’ve all used the shotgun approach of calling multiple phone numbers, and we’ve all experienced overflowing voice mail boxes and lost email. What a waste of time and energy for people and lost productivity for companies!

    Presence is the ability of a person or device to communicate with others and to display levels of availability. IM has introduced us to presence. From buddy lists, we can see whether colleagues and others are available. Now devices from videoconferencing systems to phones are becoming presence-enabled along with business productivity software and enterprise applications including customer relationship management (CRM). Presence is a key collaboration enabler, because we can easily view the availability of colleagues and connect in real time using text, voice or video as appropriate.

    Microsoft Business Division President Jeff Raikes predicted yesterday that within three years more than 100 million people will be able to make phone calls from Microsoft Office applications including Word, Outlook and SharePoint. The idea is to let us break free from “voice mail jail and telephone tag.” Raikes also announced that Microsoft will begin public beta testing later this month of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007. 

    Incidentally, Jeff provided a back-cover quote for The Culture of Collaboration book. How enterprises can create value through presence-enabled applications and devices is a theme that comes up repeatedly in my book.

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  • BMW Collaboration with DaimlerChrysler

    Collaboration creates value internally, with business partners, and sometimes with competitors. But how do we know whether collaborating with competitors makes sense? One test is whether collaboration saves money for everybody involved without risking marketplace position or advantage.

    BMW and DaimlerChrysler are expanding their collaboration on developing hybrid drive systems. The collaboration, described in a story in Reliable Plant Magazine, will let the two companies achieve increased efficiency through economies of scale. The plan is to accelerate commercialization. Since each company will adapt the components in different ways to complement each brand, the deal is considered win/win. 

    BMW has a long and rich commitment to collaboration. As I describe in The Culture of Collaboration book, BMW figured out how to integrate collaborative tools and culture into its operations long before many other companies. Telecooperation is the word BMW has used to describe the marriage of collaborative tools and culture in a globally-distributed design and manufacturing environment. And the X5 was the first vehicle built entirely through telecooperation. In 1999, the company invited me to visit its design center in Munich. I witnessed then how engineers in Munich were successfully collaborating with counterparts in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Some months later, the physical representation of their collaboration, the X5, rolled off the line.

    Whether collaboration is internal or external, the marriage of tools and culture can create awesome value.

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  • Web Conferencing, IM and Network Security

    I recently had a compelling collaborative session and conversation with Robert de Monts. Robert contacted me after reading my article in NetworkWorld entitled “Real-Time Collaboration Gets Real.” Robert has an executive background in the network security industry and was on the original Dassault Systemes team that implemented Catia design tools at Boeing. As I describe in The Culture of Collaboration book, Boeing has a unique approach to collaborating with partners. Now Robert is the vice president of marketing and business development for Imera, a company founded by Jaushin Lee and Budi Sutardja, two former Cisco technical managers.

    Imera is a security play in the collaboration space. The company’s TeamLinks platform provides “on-premise” vs. hosted web conferencing and instant messaging. This involves buying hardware and software. The focus is on security, compliance, enterprise controls, and federation. TeamLinks has particular relevance for extended enterprises in which companies collaborate regularly with business partners. These partners may be spread around the globe.

    With TeamLinks, each participating enterprise in the “ecosystem” controls user-level access to information. Authentication, authorization, and auditing of end-users takes place within the IT department of each enterprise. And each participant can collaborate with external colleagues within the federation without compromising enterprise network security.

    There are certainly other web conferencing and IM products that can be used across enterprises, but often security problems preclude the use of all features when collaborating with people outside the firewall. Imera’s emphasis on security for external collaboration among business partners is impressive.

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  • Collaborating with Cuba

    On a flight from Montego Bay, Jamaica a couple of weeks ago, I was passing the time by monitoring pilot/control tower communications. United Airlines lets passengers eavesdrop on Channel 9 of the airline’s audio system. As the plane left Jamaican air space, the controller signed off with a customary “Good day.” Shortly thereafter, I heard a female Spanish accent. The plane was entering Cuban air space, and the pilot had established a link with Havana air traffic control. There was constant conversation as the Cuban controller guided the pilot in his ascent. This collaboration continued until the Cuban controller handed off the pilot to controllers in Miami but not before signing off with a friendly “Buenas tardes.”

    It makes absolute sense, of course, that U.S. commercial airline pilots collaborate with Cuban air traffic controllers as planes enter and leave Cuban air space. Nevertheless, the U.S. embargo suggests that Cuba is an enemy of the state. So, in effect, the United pilot was collaborating with the “enemy.”

    In the business realm, competitors are often considered enemies. Does it make sense to collaborate with competitors? Sometimes. Consider the many joint ventures among competitors and such consortiums as Exostar in the aerospace industry. Exostar lets competitor/partners and suppliers collaborate asynchronously through team rooms and synchronously through web conferencing. It’s a situation in which people may be collaborators in the morning and competitors in the afternoon. The acid test of whether collaborating with competitors makes sense is whether the collaboration creates value for all of the collaborators.

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  • Toyota’s Leadership

    In his story entitled “From 0 to 60 to World Domination” in the New York Times Magazine this week, Jon Gertner makes some excellent observations.

    Gertner notes that production and sales figures tell only part of the story of Toyota’s success. The other part is cultural. Gertner characterizes the Toyota Way as the company’s culture of efficiency and problem-solving. However, the reason Toyota is efficient and can solve problems is the company’s Culture of Collaboration. 

    At Toyota, hierarchy plays less of a role than at many other organizations—and flat organizational structures are part and parcel of the Culture of Collaboration. Many Toyota leaders have worked on the production line and have sold cars. Therefore, leaders respect people on the front lines and people at all levels contribute to decisions. When I was conducting research for the book, I experienced first hand the fundamental role that collaboration plays at Toyota.

    Toyota extends the Toyota Way and the Culture of Collaboration through its innovative application of collaborative tools. Interactive video plays a role. Using videoconferencing with a variety of task-specific tools, Toyota has created a rich product design and manufacturing environment.

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  • Collaborative Leadership for Harvard

    In naming Drew Gilpin Faust its first female president, Harvard University is choosing a candidate who has never led a university. What Faust brings to the table, however, is scholarship and collaborative leadership. In Harvard’s news release and in countless news stories about the appointment, the adjective collaborative appears.

    Faust is the dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, the smallest of Harvard’s schools. Her collaborative approach appealed to the search committee which wants to heal the wounds of a campus divided by her predecessor, Larry Summers. Besides his controversial comments about women’s aptitude, Summers has been accused of having a controlling leadership style.

    Increasingly, organizations seek collaborative leaders. Dictating policy without inviting input into decisions is old news. Creating value requires putting aside titles and hierarchy. Real-time collaboration tools such as instant messaging and spontaneous web and videoconferencing support this shift by encouraging people regardless of title or function to solve problems, brainstorm and create value on the fly. I know one software company CIO who has ruffled some feathers by using IM regularly with people several levels down. But the organization’s culture is catching up with her collaborative leadership style.

    For any manager wondering whether collaborative leadership enhances careers, the story of Drew Gilpin Faust should provide at least a hint.

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