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Instant Messaging
"According to a paper in the latest edition of the journal Computer Standards & Interfaces, the answer is yes. It seems that teams that collaborate using a instant messageing software like MSN messenger or GoogleTalk generate more ideas than those who reply on email instead..."Click here to read full post.
Posted by Tom @ New ScientistBlog
Technorati Tags: im, messenger, instant messaging, instant messenger, brainstorming
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My name is Deniz Akay and I live in
The NS study resonate strongly with my use and observations of enterprise chat over the past 10+ years. There are a variety of factors at play IMO, but three elements come to mind here:
1) Compared to email, brainstorming over IM is more like free-writing. Free-writing is one of the techniques that writers learn to get unstuck from writer's block and to prompt creativity.
2) Japanese researcher Nonaka predicted this about 15 or so years ago. Long story short, Nonaka found that the most creativity happens during tacit-to-tacit exchanges. Tacit knowledge is "what the knower knows." In other words - the most ideas get created and kicked around during conversation, not reading a manual (for example). What is chat/IM but conversation cast into text?
3) Chat/IM may be less prone to production blocking. Various bits to that, but having to wait your turn during a brainstorm session in the conference room - that's an example of production blocking. There is apparently robust research showing that brainstorming is more effective when production blocking can be eliminated. Perhaps the delay imposed by asynchronous (and slow) email delivery is a kind of defacto, insidious production blocking?
Please check out my new blog, IM Roadmap, which is primarily focused on chat and IM strategies for the enterprise.
- Eric
Great blog eric! Thanks for your comment.