Learning from mother nature's designs becomes scientific mainstream

A new scientific discipline biomimicry (also known as biomimetrics) is gaining a lot of attention.

Defined as "taking ideas from nature and implementing them in another technology such as engineering, design, computing, etc."

UK Small companies more open to virtual working practices than big ones

According to Online Recruitment, “Big businesses are left behind as smaller firms pioneer the remote office”, May 31.

A survey of attitudes to teleworking in UK business, carried out by Mitel, finds somewhat surprisingly that small businesses (72%) are much more open to remote and flexible working practices than their larger counterparts (44%).

One might think that the larger companies more advanced IT and communications infrastructures might make them more amenable to teleworking?

However perhaps mindset may be more important than technology with the bigger companies preference for ‘command and control’ and “if you can’t see it you can manage it” holding them back in new working practices compared with a more ‘self-managed team’ approach popular with small entrepreneurial companies.

There is a debate raging (see below) over the blogosphere at the minute about a new type of software - 'social software'. It was fanned about a year ago by an excellent article in Darwin Magazine where Stowe Boyd described "social software" as the "opposite of project oriented collaboration tools".

In a previous post, Bioteams are 'always on' - 'presence' technology introduced, I talked about the need for virtual team members to be able to reach their colleagues at any time on whichever device they are 'present'.

Mobile teamworkers need better batteries more than better broadband

We talk about ubiquitous wireless broadband as the enabler of truly mobile working.... however if you are a 'power laptop' user then its more likely you will be stopped in your mobile tracks by your battery running out than by lack of access to broadband.

Virtual team technology providing benefits but inter-personal issues still critical in global teams

Thanks to Dinesh Tantri for pointing me to a very useful and possibly under-exposed report by the Information Work Productivity Council into ‘IT Support for Global Collaboration’ published in January 2004.

Ever increasing dependence on virtual communication technologies in organisations and teams is creating unexpected legal concerns for both employers and employees.