In a just published book Work Goes Mobile by Michael Lattanzi, Antti Korhonen and Vishy Gopalakrishnan, authors of Nokia’s mobility master plan, propose a very useful application profiling scheme to establish the degree to which a business could exploit mobile technologies in their broadest sense. This approach would also be very useful for establishing the support requirements for virtually networked teams.

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The Economist, July 16th 2008, reports on “The cult of the dabbawala” a 5000 strong collective who are the direct descendants of a 17th century Indian warrior king. The dabbawalla have developed a fantastic reputation for organisational excellence and amazing teamwork all based on a collective leadership model without the need for any technology!

Robin Good comments on research by both Russell Research and Raindance Communications, Inc., showing that online meetings fail to engage anything like the full concentration of the participants who utilise their spare brainpower bandwidth to multi-task and do other things. We should have a prize for the person who has done the most unusual thing whilst "technically present" at an online meeting?

Home-shoring is replacing off-shoring

Matt Keating, writing in Phone home for The Guardian (Saturday October 15), reports that “Virtual call centres” (aka home-shoring) where staff work from home over the web can save employers significant infrastructure and accommodation costs and also keep workers happier.He also notes some of the management challenges in keeping the remote workers connected with their employers.