Mar 18, 2010
How MIT Defines the Virtual Office
We’ve looked at how several different organizations define the virtual office in previous columns – and we’re not quite done yet. It’s interesting to see the various definitions of a virtual office and even how the definition has evolved over time.
This week, we’re going to look at how the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Center for Coordination Science defines two terms in the virtual office world: virtual company and virtual office.
Virtual Company: A company that does not have a physical location. Rather, it is more like a collection of individuals that work from their home offices. (We may want to add the term “Virtual Team” to capture the essence of the companies like Reuters that create a team of people who are actually employed by other organizations but are brought together on a specific project.)
This is well stated and I found it interesting that MIT also calls out the virtual team. Virtual teams are more and more common as larger companies hire vendors as independent contractors to complete assignments. A virtual company may or may not use virtual offices, but companies that use virtual offices often have virtual teams at some level.
Virtual Office: The company has a physical location, but employees have no assigned offices. Employees may have lockers and “check out” a desk for the day, they may set up an “office” in their hotel, etc. This term is distinct from “Virtual Company” which refers to companies that have no one physical location at all, no collection of inventory that’s held by the company, etc.
This is halfway true as we understand it today. A company that has a physical location could use virtual offices for their employees. But in today’s virtual world, more often we see entrepreneurs using virtual offices so they can get a prestigious business address, a phone number and other services. Companies may also use virtual offices as a means of low-risk expansions into new markets. And large companies may use virtual office technologies for regional offices where there is only a handful of employees.
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