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IMPACT
August 2011
www.technologyreview.com
Published by MIT
AUGUST 2011
Executive Summary
CONTENTS
The Big Question
2 The Rise of the Virtual Office
Emerged Technologies
3 Tiny, Cloud-Powered Desktops
4 How to Secure the Virtual Office
5 Intelligent E-mail Agents
6 Telepresence Robots
7 Google Translate in the Office
8 Recognizing Customers
9 Finding the Office Buck-Passers
New Business Models
10 New Options for Wi-Fi Squatters
11 Office Lessons from Africa
Case Studies
12 Smashing the Cubicles
13 Uniting a World of Employees
14 The Dangers of Workplace Inactivity
15 Bring Your Own Device
16 Green Mountain State Gets Greener
17 Using Games to Get New Ideas
18 Attending to Digital Etiquette
Leaders
19 Bringing Offshoring to Villages
20 An Office on Every Surface
21 The Future of the Office Internet
Infographics
22 Designing Around Collaboration
24 Offices Go Mobile
BUSINESS IMPACT
www.technologyreview.com
Working Anywhere,
Including in the Office
By DAV ID TALBOT
EVG E N IA E LI S E EVA
RETHINKING WORK White-collar productivity will likely continue to rise because of technologies that
make it easier for people to work from anywhere.
Emerged Technologies
G ETTY I MAG E S
www.technologyreview.com
Emerged Technologies
Mobile-device sales
(millions)
Attackers have learned to customize malicious programs that can remain undetected
for days or weeks. And VPNs only protect
against eavesdropping. Theyre useless
against already-infected devices.
The results can be ugly: witness the
Department of Health and Human Services Wall of Shame, a list of medical-recordrelated breaches, including 32 incidents this
year, of which 18 were caused by lost portable
devices or laptops. Such security issues are
widely expected to worsen.
The problems have forced informationtechnology teams to switch tactics: rather
than trying to secure the device, theyre
coming up with ways to protect sensitive
data even if the devices are compromised.
For example, Heartland Payment Systems,
the credit-card processing firmchastened
700
Smart phones
600
Tablets
500
PROJ ECTE D
400
300
200
100
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
GARTN E R
Emerged Technologies
By LE E G O M E S
G O O G LE
www.technologyreview.com
remain dumb. There are a number of common actions that users may need to take
after reading an e-mail, such as updating
a piece of software or entering an item into
a calendar. But current e-mail programs
offer limited help in performing those tasks.
Some companies are developing smarter
mail programs to help out. Farzin Arsanjani, president of HyperOffice, in Rockville,
Maryland, says his companys collaborative
software is designed to break down barriers
between current office-productivity programs,
enabling information to flow more easily
between, for example, Outlook and Excel.
What about an e-mail program that is
smart enough to actually answer mail for
you? Such things exist, but only in very limited domains that are irrelevant to the average problems of an everyday office.
One example is Project Radar, a fouryear, multi-million-dollar DARPA effort
to develop automated e-mail reading that
would be useful to the armed forces. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon and SRI International collaborated on the work and
eventually produced a system that could
handle a small group of logistical and scheduling messages.
SRI eventually spun off from Project
Radar personal assistant software known
as Siri, which it later sold to Apple. Siri supplies mobile-phone users with answers
to relatively simple questions from wellstructured databases, such as Where is the
nearest post office? and What restaurants
around here are still open?
Michael Freed, program director at
SRIs Artificial Intelligence Center, envisions future personal assistants that are
even more robust than Siri. But they are
not going to be perfect. If they catch things
only 90 percent of the time, is that going
to be good enough for you? A lot is going
to depend on how much people will tolerate them when they dont work right.
Emerged Technologies
Telepresence Robots
Seek Office Work
New models have reached the marketplace, but high initial prices
keep applications limited.
By TOM S I M O N I T E
ANYB OTS
Emerged Technologies
TE C H N O LO GY R EVI EW
www.technologyreview.com
Emerged Technologies
Recognizing Customers
Wherever They Are
AD O B E
Emerged Technologies
CATAP H O RA
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LI Q U I D S PAC E
10
K IWANJA.N ET
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11
Case Studies
12
which Cisco recently began selling to businesses. Rick Hutley, a Cisco vice president,
chooses his desk according to which colleagues are present and whats on the days
agenda. Then he docks his Cius to a port on
the desk that includes a phone handset. The
tablet handles voice and video calls whether
its docked or mobile, and it can be used to
share documents at meetings.
It can also be plugged into a monitor and
keyboard to be used like a full PC. You can
walk around with your entire world with
you in this device, Hutley says. My laptop
would often stay on my desk, but the tablet
never does. If he needs to make a private
voice or video call, he can step into one of
the rooms at the edges of the cluster.
Employees can also participate in the
companys corporate social network, Quad,
which is accessible on the Web or through
the iPhone, iPad, or Cius. People can post
STE E LCAS E
Case Studies
A MORE SOCIAL FUTURE As the fourth largest company in India, with more than 130,000
employees, Infosys provides a way to unite scattered workers.
By KRI S T I NA B J O R A N
ZONDOR
ith more than 130,000 employees worldwidein cities including Hong Kong, Zurich, Beijing,
Atlanta, and Bangalore, where its world
headquarters is locatedthe Indian IT and
outsourcing giant Infosys has a particular
need to keep everyone connected.
So Infosys decided, earlier this year,
not only to sell but also to internally use
a corporate social-networking platform,
iEngage. With this, it joins a fast-growing
trend toward putting social media to work.
Giving widely scattered employees a new
way to collaborate encourages innovation,
says Sunil Senan, an associate vice president at Infosys. We stand to get a lot more
out of our employees through these social
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13
Case Studies
Some companies are trying out existing products to encourage activity in their
workers. Pegasystems, a software company
headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, gave its employees Fitbits, thumb-sized
Researchers are using activity-monitoring technology to figure out
devices that detect wearers movements, as
how to keep employees healthier.
part of a broader wellness program. We
By EMI LY S I N G E R
have a population of technical people who
are often just sitting at their computers,
and we had seen in medical-claims data
evidence that our employees in general were
growing body of evidence suggests
Owen and collaborators are about to
not physically active enough, says Janice
that sedentary office workers and
begin a clinical study in Melbourne in which
Barker, senior director of compensation and
other inactive people are at a rela- office workers are given adjustable desks
benefits for Pegasystems. That was sometively high risk of dying early.
that let them choose between sitting and
thing we felt we could make efforts to solve.
While many employers have introduced
standing throughout the day. Participants
As part of the program, teams of employees
wellness programs to encourage workers to
will wear accelerometers to measure activ- compete on how many steps they take over
exercise and lose weight, few have tried to
ity and inclinometers that measure sitting
a given period.
figure out ways to make office work itself
time to determine whether the desks reduce
Barker says the Fitbit has been very popless sedentary. For most people with indoor
the time spent sitting or at least break up
ular, with requests for it pouring in from
office jobs or doing lot of driving, work is
sitting time. Researchers will also look at
employees in Russia, India, and China.
really the biggest chunk of sedentary time
participants levels of glucose, insulin, and Weve seen an incredible increase in activity
during the day, says Neville Owen, profes- triglycerides to determine whether changes
levels, she says. I personally was someone
sor of health behavior at the University of
in their habits reduce these markers of car- who never got out of my chair. But when
Queensland, Australia. The average Ameri- diovascular disease. We will also look at
you have this Fitbit and see how little you
can, for example, spends about 10 hours a
participants perception of their own energy
move, its incredibly motivating.
day sitting, and the problem is getting worse. levels, says Owens.
Another approach may be simply to make
it more acceptable to walk around. Last
November, when about 20 scientists, exerSIT OR STAND The height
cise physiologists, and ergonomics experts
of this desk from Steelcase
converged at Stanford to discuss the dangers
adjusts so that the user can
of sitting, they were encouraged to perch
sit or stand.
on exercise balls, stand at caf tables, and
wander around during talks.
We got a lot of interesting feedback, like
This was the first conference where I was
still awake at 4 p.m., says Ken Smith, a
researcher at the Stanford Center on Longevity, which hosted the conference.
Smith and collaborators are working on a
pilot project at a call center in California to
implement suggestions that resulted from
the conference. We want to explore cultural
changes in the workplace that make it okay
to stand in a highly sedentary environment
like a call center, where it might be frowned
on to walk around, or not even possible, he
says. Part of the study will be to look at the
impact on productivity.
STE E LCAS E
14
Case Studies
Remember when only the boss got a BlackBerry? At ColgatePalmolive, employees bring their own smart phones to work.
By ROB E RT D. H O F
AB E R D E E N G R O U P
www.technologyreview.com
28% No
15
Case Studies
16
TE C H N O LO GY R EVI EW
Case Studies
U.K. D E PARTM E NT FO R WO R K AN D P E N S I O N S
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17
Case Studies
By KAT H E R I N E B O U R Z AC
Incivility studies show that the vast majority of rude behavior in the workplace flows
down the chain of command. It costs twice
Senning: My family calls it the technological brick wall. You put enough devices
between you and another person, and you
can forget that theres a person there. The
technology itself isnt rude. The existence
of the technology might allow someone to
forget about the impact his words or actions
are having on someone at the other end. The
vast majority of bad behavior is inconsiderate behavior.
18
E M I LY P O ST I N STITUTE
What should you do when your supervisor, or your employee, sends you a
Facebook friend request and youre not
comfortable with it?
Leaders
he next decade will bring remarkable changes in the way office work is
done. Perhaps nowhere will change
be more profound than in countries such
as India, where improved network access
and smart technologies could make it possible for certain tasks to be divided among
people working outside major city centers.
Xerox is one of many companies developing the technologies that will pave the way.
CTO Sophie Vandebroek described some of
the efforts of the companys two-year-old
Xerox Research Center in India.
www.technologyreview.com
19
Leaders
By ROB E RT L E M O S
20
M I C R O S O FT
Leaders
By TO M S I M O N I T E
CISCO
www.technologyreview.com
Already it is clear that people and collaboration matter so much more at work
than they did before. You can no longer do
your job without collaborating with others,
and we will soon rely on being able to access
any person, regardless of place, and [use]
tools like social networking at work. That
might change how employment works. It
could become the norm for people to have
multiple employers, because they can more
easily share their expertise with multiple
employers very easily with this technology.
21
Infographics
Designing Around
Collaboration and Mobility
SMALL COLLABORATION SPACES Earlier this year Microsoft completed renovations on its new
Garage, a site in Redmond, Washington, that encourages innovation among small groups of employees. Throughout the building are pods like those shown here. In these temporary work spaces,
teams of two to five employees can collaborate on projects for weeks at a timesomething that can
otherwise be tough in a company with almost 90,000 employees.
22
Infographics
CLUSTERED COMMUNAL DESKS Companies whose employees telecommute can often consolidate
office space, saving significant amounts of money. This workspace by Steelcase, an office design
company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is designed to use minimal space but create an open
feeling through strategic placement of drawers and privacy panels. The desks can function as communal property, with different employees using the same workspace as needed.
GARDEN-VARIETY COLLABORATION
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23
Infographics
Offices Go Mobile
100
2,000
80
1,500
39%
60
PROJ ECTE D
32%
1,000
40
20
40%
2008
45%
500
2010
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
66% 66%
Expect to be able
to use any device
personal or companyownedto access
corporate networks
60%
Believe its not
necessary to be in
the office to be
productive
24