I don’t think anyone would refute me if I said that we are living in a rapidly changing environment, that stability and security are nice fantasies, and that moving from industrial work to knowledge work has changed the structure of business organizations. Figure 1 shows that communication, collaboration, social technologies, the cloud, and mobility are the factors impinging on business today. Figure 1 — Changing the nature of busines organizations. Add to this the ability of some companies to utilize crowds for microtasks and various new technologies, not only for increased productivity and collaboration, but with the additional ability to change the physical nature of the workplace. If you also incorporate the effects of Gen …

Just as the monster Frankenstein was put together from pieces and parts of many people, so are some of the enterprise collaboration vendors. For example, Jive just acquired Meetings.io, and Producteev to add videoconferencing and task management. Salesforce.com is another vendor that is building a collaborative Frankenstein, as is VMware, and others. The idea is that as these vendors acquire smaller companies and fold them into their framework, they begin to add more and more collaborative functionality: IM, activity streams, integration with social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), audio/video/data conferencing, online meetings (permanent or temporary). As each piece is added to the framework, unfortunately, the tools and the overall suites tend to become more complex, and require …
Although collaboration is a behavior, it can often be enabled by various technologies. But it’s not just collaboration technologies that will define the workplace of the future. This Cutter Edge outlines seven other technologies that will be just as important in shaping the future workspace. 1. Nanotechnology Nanotechnology delivers the ability to build something one atom at a time. This has big implications for supply chains, as transportation is not required when you can just grow a desk or chair out of a sheet of plastic or metal on the floor of the office. You can configure and reconfigure your office to support a face-to-face meeting (maybe by growing your conference table a bit larger), or you …



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