Evolution of Communication Skills in Virtual Product Development Process: Experience From EGPR

Abstract

More than a decade of continuous international collaboration of several European universities in teaching new product development in virtual environment gives unique opportunity to investigate evolution and development of communication techniques for NPD collaboration in virtual environment. This chapter provides theoretical and practical view on different aspects: technical evolution of ICT tools, development and fostering of communication flow, personal aspects of IT communication, with important emphasis on building of trust within virtual teams. The reader can extract from this chapter guidelines for work in collaborative virtual environment, to run effectively either small projects, meetings and lectures or even more complex projects, distributed among several dislocated teams. The chrono-logical overview of the continuous virtual communication in the last 15 years gives also fair suggestions about future evolution for the next decade.