Architecture students from Egypt and the United States meeting in Second Life
The results of this Harvard Business School study, and many others like it, provide ample and compelling evidence to suggest that virtual collaboration is a powerful means of achieving new levels of efficiency and effectiveness:
“Remarkably, an extensive benchmarking study reveals, it isn’t necessary to bring team members together to get their best work. In fact, they can be even more productive if they stay separated and do all their collaborating virtually. The scores of successful virtual teams the authors examined didn’t have many of the psychological and practical obstacles that plagued their more traditional, face-to-face counterparts. Team members felt freer to contribute–especially outside their established areas of expertise. The fact that such groups could not assemble easily actually made their projects go faster, as people did not wait for meetings to make decisions, and individuals, in the comfort of their own offices, had full access to their files and the complementary knowledge of their local colleagues.”
As information-based virtual collaboration gradually turns the corner to mainstream adoption, it won’t be long until the benefits of 3D collaboration are as unequivocally proven (if they haven’t already), and virtual worlds like Second Life and OpenSim will soon prove to be an ideal modality for gathering a virtual team together to collaborate within a realtime, 3D collaborative environment.
