Enterprising Individuals: An Investigation into Fostering Professional Ties within Large Organizations

Maintaining relationships is a fundamental activity influencing professional success. Current on-line communication tools are inadequate at taking advantage of and helping people maintain their professional network in large organizations. In this work we discuss findings from a contextual inquiry into the behaviors and activities involved with maintaining professional connections through digital communication. We present key findings derived from interviews with 14 professionals. In particular, we focus on how our participants foster and invoke collaboration. We present a set of design scenarios to illustrate emerging areas of opportunity for digital communication leveraging the constraints of being situated in a large organization.

By: Eric Wilcox; Chad Thornton

Published in: RC23446 in 2004

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