For over five years, social scientist Dennis Sandow has conducted social action research for HP. His work documents how dynamic social systems create organizational value that crosses the boundaries of traditional organizational charts. Influenced by Chilean biologist Dr. Humberto Manurana, who focused on intelligent action in social systems where everyone accepts each other as legitimate participants, Sandow has helped HP understand and map the networks that create value in the organization. I interviewed Dennis for the Lab's recent publication on the emerging telepresence industry: Telepresence, Effective Visual Collaboration and the Future of Global Business at the Speed of Light I was so impressed with Dennis and his work that I asked him if he would participate in a webconference to share some of his work and findings with the Lab's audience. Click the image below to view the webconference.

To stream the webconference and interview click on the image above or HERE. Important Note: If this is your first WebEx webconference you will be prompted to authorize a thin WebEx client that will allow you to view the show.

Some of the Key Takeaways:

Social Collaboration Defined: Collaboration is simply the social coordination of of action around a shared purpose.

Dennis defined Knowledge as being created in the coordination of action.

The science of understanding social collaboration has been influenced by the work of: George Herbert Mead, JL Moreno, CI Lewis, John Dewey, Jean Piaget, WE Deming, Dr. Humberto Maturana , Gregory Bateson, and Heinz von Foerster

Dennis recognized Dr. Humberto Maturana, a chilean biologist, as one of the leading thinkers in social collaboration.

To understand social networks and collaboration at HP, Dennis goes to work with HP engineers to understand how and with who the engineers collaborate. The participants are surveyed on how and with whom they collaborate with on a daily basis inside and outside of the organization and these social networks are then mapped

With years of research under their belts, studies at HP have shown that value and social capital are created in dynamic, distributive, and collaborative social networks that yield knowledge, innovation, and performance improvement.

Social networks are dynamic and self-organizing

Collaboration is innately human and social networks develop without anyone trying to structure them and top down reorganizations can damage these networks

The majority of the work done in understanding the importance of collaborative social networks was done prior to the implementation of HP Halo. When the Halo Collaboration Studios were implemented at HP research shifted to how the Halo Studio affected the quality of the social networks at HP.

The common themes in particpant interviews included:
* The quality of relationships developed using Halo are much better than traditional videoconferencing, NetMeeting, etc. and improve human and social capital - #1 answer among participants
* Reading body language and facial recognition improves communications and reduces misunderstanding. - Viewed as improving productivity between participants especially cross-culturally with foreign born employees in other countries.
* Users forget the technology with Halo
* Halo is perceived as "easy" and "natural"
* People are perceived as human in Halo
* Less time travelling
* More time with family

The HP Halo Collaboration Studio in a Call

Click Here to Purchase a copy of: The Nature of Social Collaboration: How Work Really Gets Done by Dennis Sandow and Anne Murray Allen

Other: I am at the Medical Immersive Telepresence Conference at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona today. I wanted to get this up today but will be expanding it in the next couple of days. A special HPL thanks to Ray Siuta and Mark Minne at HP for making Dennis available for the webconference and interviews. HSL