CIO Article Highlights Productivity Advantage

How does the "always-on" touchscreen tablet make people more productive? Read this article in CIO.

Excerpt:

Now decisions at meetings are made quickly thanks to the iPad, he says. In the past, no one fired up laptops at meetings in a conference room because it made the executive look disengaged. When a topic came up that required facts to make a decision, such as the difference in cost for an allocated requisition and an unallocated one, the vice president of HR would have to research it later. Thus, the topic would be tabled for the next meeting.

Today, the vice president of HR can look up the pay grades on the iPad, find the difference, and then ask the president if there's room in the operating budget. The president can look it up on the iPad and respond appropriately. "You can't get closure if you don't have the facts," Rennie says. "With the iPad, it's a very different conversation because everyone is armed with the facts at their fingertips."

This is a illuminating quote. Executives didn't want to use laptops because they would look "disengaged." So in theory laptops give people all the facts at hand, but in reality, human nature what it is, the design and form factor of laptops can make some people uncomfortable.

Is this true for all executives? Of course not. People who work at Google or Yahoo no doubt use laptops in meetings all the time. There are many corporate cultures where every meeting is a laptop meeting, and these organizations already make those faster decisions.

But there are many other organizations where the culture is different, and a touchscreen tablet can be quite a productivity enhancer.