Meetings Around the World: Microsoft and Verizon

Microsoft and Verizon sponsored a study called "Meetings Around the World: The Impact of Collaboration on Business Performance."

From the press release:

"Collaboration is a key driver of overall performance of companies around the world. Its impact is twice as significant as a company’s aggressiveness in pursuing new market opportunities (strategic orientation) and five times as significant as the external market environment (market turbulence).

"The results show that collaboration can positively impact each of the gold standards of performance -- profitability, profit growth and sales growth -- to determine a company’s overall performance in the marketplace," said Jaclyn Kostner, Ph.D., best-selling author and expert on high-performance virtual collaboration. "As a general rule, global companies that collaborate better, perform better. Those that collaborate less, do not perform as well. It’s just that simple."

• An overwhelming number (9:1) see their collaborative efforts as highly productive and believe that collaboration through communication technologies provides a personal competitive advantage, keeps them informed and positions them to take advantage of new opportunities.
• Many like to work with teams (10:1), preferably from home (3:1) and not necessarily face-to-face.
• A majority (5:1) feel that conferencing provides a good alternative to travel.
• Many like to be reached wherever they are (2:1), but not necessarily all the time (9:1), which may be one of the reasons why e-mail is preferred to using the phone (3:1).