Now these tools have mutated into audio and video graphic capabilities, the Internet, and collaborative software. The future of collaboration is being spun out daily and the fabric of these collaborations, woven from the threads of individual relationships, is being strengthened, expanded, and enhanced with new tools that create shared spaces from diverse individual perspectives. But it is naive to assume that a change in the available information results in a change in behavior. While it is true that our interactions are affected by the tools we employ, Mr. Schrage suggests that it is the change in the nature of the interactions that has the greatest impact upon behavior. His research supports the idea that collaboration, not merely the efficient exchange of more and more timely information, is the greater source of created value in an enterprise.
Collaboration can occur by mail, over phone lines, and in person.
But the true medium of collaboration is other people. Real innovation comes from this social matrix. And if the nature of our interactions is more important than accelerations in the delivery and increases in the quantity of information, then management of relationships should supplant the management of information as the source of real innovation, increased productivity, and new value in enterprises.