Somewhere between live chat and email, team collaboration tools began to grow. Enterprise teams needed more than email threads -- but not necessarily instant messaging -- to stay on top of projects and share files. As artificial intelligence evolves, experts remain bullish on its prospects to enhance productivity as enterprises set a course for the future of collaboration technology. Chat tools like Slack and Teams let employees carve out productive time on their terms, according to Tim Banting, principal analyst at Global Data PLC. While all parties need to be online to chat with instant messaging, collaboration tools let participants respond asynchronously as they toggle between tasks. Other key functions include real-time communications like video or online meetings as well as shared calendars and task management, he added.

I've been working with the collaboration technology team at Cisco since 2012, and the job just keeps getting more interesting. There are technology and market forces converging right now that are radically changing the way we all work. In the next year, we're going to see fundamental shifts in collaboration technologies. One of the most important changes in how we work is happening faster than I thought it would: People are getting comfortable talking to machines. We already talk to our phones, our cars, and our houses. According to our research, 95% of white-collar workers (of 2,270 surveyed) say "bring it on" to the idea of having AIs assist them with basic meeting mechanics; 57% said AI would increase productivity.

What if your collaboration tools could actually understand the context of your words and deliver you what you really want, and not just web search results? What if it was like having another person in your office and not just a computer? Cisco Systems is aiming to answer that, in part through a $125 million acquisition of AI company MindMeld, which it announced last month. Cisco wants to incorporate MindMeld's AI platform into its collaboration products, because the tech allows users to build intelligent and human-like conversational interfaces for any application or device. AI-enhanced collaboration tools have the potential to increase efficiency, speed up the discovery of new ideas and lead to improved outcomes for teams that are working together in disparate locations.

The organizations that will prevail in the current transformation are those whose employees can learn fastest and make the best decisions. At all ages, learning readiness is influenced by technological familiarity and fluency. Our hope for solving the seemingly intractable global problems includes an optimistic outlook on the partnership between artificial intelligence and human intelligence – person by person. You'll also hear from leading executives at Konica Minolta, Cigna, Cisco, Fujitsu and Xerox. A.I. Expert Neil Jacobstein and VR Expert Andrew Wasserman will speak on the importance of these technologies in this new frontier.

New network found in any other venue. It is my Collaborative Enterprises (WETICE working groups. John R. Callahan is an assistant professor of computer science in the Department of He received his Ph.D. from the