1. What is Procter & Gamble's business strategy? What is the relationship of collaboration and innovation to that business strategy?
The main business strategy has three focus points. It needs to uphold the popularity of its existing brands, via advertising and marketing; it must extend its brands by developing new products under those brands; and it must invent and create new brands. P&G spends 3.4 percent of revenue on innovation because it is so important to them, therefore it is important for the researchers, marketers, and managers to collaborate to achieve their goals to be an innovative company and to create new and successful products.
2. How is P&G using collaboration systems to execute its business model and business strategy? List and describe the collaboration systems and technologies it is using and the benefits of each.
P&G is using collaborative systems by generating the majority of their ideas using sources from outside the company. This not only helps develop new innovations quicker, it also cuts down on research and development costs.

They switched from using email to using Microsoft products. This included instant messaging, unified communications, Microsoft Live Communications Server functionality, Web conferencing with Live Meeting, and content management with SharePoint. This was helpful to the company because it was quicker to communicate, and you could share data more efficiently to the people who need to see it.

They also adopted Teamcenter product lifecycle collaboration software from Siemens, which supports sharing of 3D visual product data. This enables more people to participate in different projects.

They also implemented s new search from start-up Connectbeam which allowed employees to share bookmarks, tag content with descriptive words that appear in future searches, and facilitates social networks of coworkers to help them find and share information more effectively.
3. What problems do collaboration systems solve for P&G?
These systems solved many problems for P&G. The can share information so much more efficiently now. They can send it directly to the people who need it and they can also access the data while traveling.
4. Why were some collaborative technologies slow to catch on at P&G?
Some of these tools were slow to catch because employees were resistant to change. They were used to email and thought it would be easier than learning a whole new system. They were also worried that if not enough people used the new tools, they would not have had the full impact and been as helpful as they could have been.
5. Compare P&G's old and new processes for writing up and distributing the results of a research experiment.
Before the tools there was no way to incorporate all the reports and discussions into a single document. One executive glued the results of experiments into Word documents and passed them out at a conference. Another executive manually entered his data and speech into PowerPoint slides, and then e-mailed the file each report to his colleagues. Now with the new system the presentations are stored in a single location, but are still accessible to employees and colleagues in other parts of the company. Anyone that wants to can access them.
6. Why would telepresence be such a useful collaborative tool for a company like P&G?
Telepresence is an excellent way to enable collaboration between employees across the world. This means that they can meet and converse with people thousands of miles away. The technology makes it possible to hold high-definition meetings over long distances. This gives them connections to people that otherwise would not have been possible. It also provides significant travel savings, more efficient flow of ideas, and quicker decision making.
7. Can you think of other ways P&G could use collaboration to foster innovation?
They could incorporate some kind of recording of all meetings. That way anyone who could not make it to the meeting would have a recording of what was said. Also if someone was taking notes from the meeting and missed something, they could reference back to the recording.