Even Cisco experiences resistance to new technologies from some workers

You’d think that it would be pretty easy to roll out new technology at high-tech firms but they’re like the

rest of us when it comes to introducing new ways of working – there can be some resistance from some corners. In an interview with ITBusinessEdge, Patrick Tam, Cisco senior manager, operations describes how the company introduced an internal collaboration platform called the Collaboratory based on 18 separate Web 2.0 technologies. It’s used by 70 teams across the company and features wikis, blogs, RSS feeds and several types of discussion and group collaboration facilities.

According to Tam:

There are several ways we tried to get to the point of critical mass. We needed to handhold individuals up front. This is definitely new stuff at Cisco, which has a bit of an older worker population. We received resistance up front. … Until people actually tried it and saw the value, it’s very challenging. We really focus on training user groups versus users. We really had to ingrain that message to our community.

The workers had been working in individual silos previously and the plaform has enabled Cisco to help meet its goal of “thinking globally and acting globally” allowing workers to collaborate wherever in the world they might be located.

The Collaboratory is used in Cisco’s professional services area that helps with network architectures and implementing network communication products. It won the Cisco-wide award for collaboration and communication in June 2008.

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