Future Workplaces, towards the “Collaborative” Web

The knowledge-intensive information economy is upon us while at the same time existing working organisation and tools are not anymore appropriate to support remote knowledge workers collaborating together, their concurrent tasks and related information “tsunami” over flooding them. As a consequence, working organisation is shifting towards networked individuals driven simultaneously by the necessity of focusing on core competency while increasing creativity and innovation to remain competitive on the global market. These in turn push organisations to implement new ways of working and interacting among diverse competency fields that require more effective and efficient collaborative working environments. This paper presents the vision of turning the traditional information based World Wide Web into a new paradigm: the “Collaborative Web” acting as a kind of universal Collaborative Working Environment connecting not only documents but all collaborative resources and processes as well. It could be seen as a ubiquitous collaborative workplace following the worker wherever he is and connecting him instantaneously with other collaborating resources and processes as a kind of knowledge hub. The results of a community based on-line survey conducted on the MOSAIC website and dedicated to mobile collaborative workplaces is presented and analysed. An attempt is made to better characterise the mobile collaborative workplace in drafting a tentative “Workplace Effectiveness Map” considering together the four critical elements of purpose, performance, balance and networking. The paper concludes in introducing several research challenges that need to be addressed in the short, medium and long term.