Can’t we all just get along?
Well, according to CIO Insight – which reported the results of a study by Basex – just getting along, or collaborating by email, IM, and blogging is creating a great big sucking sound of lost American worker productivity to the tune of $588B.
I alluded to this dilemma a bit in my post Blogging’s a Big Time Sink, so Why Blog?
It’s hard to argue with the numbers and it would seem to make sense that all these ostensible improvements enabled by better (and more) forms of collaboration come with a big down side.
On the other hand, perhaps there are productivity gains that offset the losses – see my post The Google and Web 2.o Productivity Dividends.
Finally, and as the report acknowledges, this all ties back to information explosion and attention diffusion. As I said in my end of year post: “The companies that can figure out how to help people make sense out of info – to gather info, sift and separate the good from the bad – and do this well – will be successful.”
