I’ve spent time the last couple of weeks writing an editorial for CXO about what the Online Collaboration Revolution means to the global economy.  I realized two things from this exercise.  First, it explained why I finally left grad school — it was very painful to put down ideas in a format longer than an email.  Second, the Collaboration Revolution is real and very exciting.

The thesis of the editorial is that online collaboration will do for the information revolution what the assembly line did for the industrial revolution.  It will dramatically increase the productivity of knowledge workers, value different skills, and ultimately change the character of work.

We already see new collaborative tools changing our work.  Ranging from instant messaging (I can’t imagine Forum One without AIM), to web conferencing, to workspaces like ProjectSpaces, these tools are being adopted and affecting our work style, location, team composition, and products.

The impact on the economy will be tremendous.  We’ll see new methods of knowledge creation and decision-making, faster and more dramatic innovation, changes in the role of government, and new kinds of working relationships.

The assembly line increased demand for unskilled labor and tended to create a very long, regimented work day.  I’m optimistic that the changes brought about by the collaboration revolution will tend to be positive for a very large segment of the population.  Work will be more interesting, more inclusive, and more flexible while the economy will grow faster and become more efficient with widespread benefits.

This is a topic I’ll be coming back to for some time to come.