Mobilizing Intellectual Bandwidth in a Distributed Virtual Organization: The Missing Links

The rise of distributed collaborative environments has brought about new opportunities for bringing together the experience and skills of geographically dispersed employees towards joint goals. However, the extent to which collaborative technologies can be used to mobilise distributed knowledge and skills remains illusive. The Intellectual Bandwidth model posits that an organization’s potential to create value is determined by its intellectual assets and collaboration capabilities. While this is a powerful assertion, and has been demonstrated theoretically, the link between the mobilisation of intellectual resources through collaborative technologies has yet to be linked in practise. This paper investigates the use of collaborative technologies in a distributed organization and provides insight into the processes that enable intellectual bandwidth to be mobilised. Its contribution lies in uncovering the missing links between collaboration and the use of knowledge resources to create value.