2024-07-21
Remote teams are less likely to integrate the knowledge of their members to produce new, disruptive ideas.
This is the conclusion of a study, published in Nature and reported by Scientific American, analyzing millions of research articles and patent applications.
Correlation is not causation, and these results do not necessarily apply to anything other than scientific research. Yet, if you think of science, engineering or innovation as being relevant to your role or your business, these conclusions might be worth considering. There are some thought-provoking details, too, such as how in-person collaboration breaks down the barriers of reputation, allowing junior collaborators to contribute more.
In the early days of eXtreme Programming it was understood that to be effective, people collaborating on a project (developers but also the customer) had to be in the same room, every day. I am not sure whether today’s agilewashing even pays lip service to that practice.