Press

Letter from CEO

The information technologies available to us today are mostly a blessing, but at times they can be a challenge. Email, IM, and document sharing were designed to improve our productivity by enabling us to work on a large number of projects with multiple collaborators in almost any location. But the way we use these tools for creating and sharing information can actually reduce our productivity. We have version control disasters. We spend our time putting out collaboration brushfires. We are inundated by a virtual tsunami of email that, even when relevant, isn’t directly connected to the documents and projects we’re working on. On top of this, we are dealing with too many moving parts and not knowing where they all are at any given time.

An executive colleague of mine once described his job as feeling very much like the old comedy act of spinning plates on sticks. He spends too much of his time running between projects, trying to keep them all spinning before something falls, and he often wonders how he gets anything done. Most of us know how this feels. We are pretty good at getting documents and projects started, and we’re pretty good at sending them off in email. We’ve even learned to somehow manage documents with folders and files. But eventually the “plates” start wobbling when we end up with multiple versions from multiple collaborators, or when someone wants to see an earlier version, or someone wants to view an email or other communication associated with a project from several months prior. Suddenly we’re spending our time just managing the flood of information, trying to figure out where things are instead of spending our time thinking, innovating and getting things done. It is as if we are driving with the brakes on.

When given the freedom from the information management curse, everyone will discover the capacity to be creative. Along with many business leaders, I believe that creativity is the new currency of globalization. But in order for this to happen, the 21st century creative worker requires a solution that goes beyond document management, Internet searches and peer-to-peer sharing. We need to be able to work more effectively both as individuals and teams. We need to carve out more time for creative thinking, and we need to be able to better leverage relationships to create new value.

Today I am pleased to bring forth this entirely new type of collaboration platform with LUNARR. By eliminating some of the complexity that is inherent in document and online collaboration, while maintaining the integrity of private communication, I believe LUNARR can help foster more productive, creative collaboration across teams and organizations.

I hope you will try it and see for yourself just how easy collaboration can be.

-Toru Takasuka