While I appreciate and value the intellectual capital in this article, it's not a forgone conclusion that these are all the correct elements for standards that need to be developed. To me they look right, but there may be others needed that haven't been discussed yet. So I think this is a very important beginning, to initiate a dialogue over these ideas that Craig has put out. I hope there will be a lot of discussion about it, and about what other elements can come into it, and about what the benefits are that should be obtained through the development of standards for collaborations. The kind of collaboration described is easily done within a company or dealing with outside suppliers, where it's a secondary relationship but not a peer relationship.
Collaboration is natural within the structure and texture of our business.
If we're working with a manufacturer to put a deactivator in a scanner, for instance, although we're collaborating, we think of it as project work, even if we have to structure an agreement and rules of engagement. When you talked about web-enabled collaboration, that hit home. There's a lower technical risk in our business. We haven't yet been forced to move at light speed. Web-based collaboration will likely have less tolerance for mistakes or miscommmunication or confusion than other forms of collaboration.