With developments in collaborative and cloud-based technologies, collaboration within the workplace has seen immense growth over the last decade. We at CSOFT are huge supporters of this concept, collaborating daily in production, for deliverables, and to generate new ideas on how to make life easier for our clients. TermWiki, the localization industry’s first online collaborative terminology management portal, and ReviewIT, a web-based platform for collaborative translation review and validation, attest to this.
We’re not the only ones who support collaborative practices. Last November, Google, with help from market research firm Future Foundation, produced the Google Decisive Decade Report, which explores reasons why this growth in collaboration will continue on in this next decade.
Over 3500 employees from France, Germany, Japan, UK and USA were surveyed and interviewed about how technology currently influences the way they interact and generate ideas, and how they believe this will change in the workplaces of 2020.
The charts below present some interesting findings from the report:
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Aside from these, the report also concluded that the more people collaborate, the more creative and innovative we become. The participants also believe that innovation is important and value opportunities where they are encouraged to be so.
And lastly, we leave you with a statement from the report to ponder:
A key barrier to realizing the innovative potential of collaborative tools is a lack of vision from senior management and lack of investment – both need to be resolved if businesses want to drive innovation in the future.
For more details, the report in its entirety can be found here.
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Collaboration is the word for the 21st century. We are a world of systems embedded in other systems, overlapping with yet more systems. Considering how mobile we individuals are today within this operating space we call planet earth, we cannot keep up unless we communicate, collaborate, share and change our thinking with the times. To you, CSOFT: the line your author places at the end of the article hits the heart of the concept: the more people collaborate, the more creative and innovative we become. The role of management is to unleash ideas among its staff, not stifle as all too many organizations are guilty of today. Collaboration is the very business model of my employer. If as individuals, as managers, as companies, or as countries we think we know the answers on our own, we’re dead wrong. We can answer a lot of questions better and quicker when we collaborate. The question might be about what’s safe to eat for dinner today, this 29th day of March, 2011, about which business deal to take when a CEO picks up the phone at midnight tonight to call Silicon Valley, about how to create the next spaceship, operating system for a computer, or most aerodynamic nailclippers. Hell, whether the red or green bow tie fits best with my reindeer print v-neck this Christmas, I’d be better off consulting my associates. Well done, CSOFT writers.
Reading through the report was very insightful – thanks for sharing all this good information.