Assessing collaborative tools from an information-processing perspective: identification of value-added processes

The authors explore the relevance of an information-processing perspective to collaboration. Based on the information cycle and inspired by the mechanics of collaboration, their model suggests that collaboration implies two types of informational activities: taskwork-related and teamwork-related. They present competitive intelligence as an example of collaborative projects, and CI taskwork informational mechanics, translated into criteria, to evaluate CI software. These criteria reveal the value-added processes that must be incorporated in a tool to transform information into intelligence. To assess the collaborative utility of CI tools, the paper suggests a number of teamwork informational mechanics that could be used to define another level of evaluation criteria.