STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 24, 2000--

-- Individual Messaging Practices Are as Unique as Fingerprints

-- Companies Can Create an Environment that Encourages Innovation

Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI) today released findings from its fourth annual study on messaging practices in the 21st century workplace entitled "Messaging for Innovation: Building the Innovation Infrastructure Through Messaging Practices." This year's results identify the role business messaging tools and practices play in supporting continued innovation in companies of all sizes. Corporate America has long believed that the "invisible work" of learning to use messaging tools and organize tasks is the background noise that distracts us from our "real work." The revelation of Pitney Bowes' latest research is that successful messaging practices are an important part of the "real work" and that messaging tools not only help organize work, they actually enhance thinking.

U.S. workers manage upwards of 200 messages per day and 17 projects per week across seven work teams, and are simultaneously expected to produce the next revenue stream, great idea or technological breakthrough. Top performers rely on a host of digital and paper-based messaging tools and practices to organize both workflow and thinking, allowing them to reserve brainpower for the value-add activities that drive innovation -- and bigger paychecks. While companies cannot mandate innovation among workers, this study reveals that they can create an environment in which innovation is more likely to happen.

Innovation is King in the New Economy

Endless, renewable innovation is the engine that drives value creation in the New Economy. "If knowledge is the raw material of innovation, then messaging is the way we manage and turn knowledge into innovation," said Meredith Fischer, co-author of the study and vice president, Pitney Bowes Inc. "The crux of our latest research is that messaging tools and practices create the infrastructure -- or the tools, features, practices and activities -- for individual thinking and shared thought that make innovation possible."

What turns knowledge into innovation? Knowledge work is about using information to add value to processes and decision-making at all levels of an organization by creating opportunity, applying a thought, collaborating or problem solving. While companies can't control innovation, which is a purely human process, they can control the "mechanics" around it to create an environment in which innovation is more likely to happen.

The Connection Between Messaging and Innovation

Pitney Bowes' study reveals that messaging adds value to the individual and, by extension, the organization. Messaging practices help workers create a personal competitive advantage by organizing tasks and enhancing thinking, regulating workflows, staying in sync with co-workers and maximizing their organizational contribution across all strategic and tactical work.

"Individual and group messaging practices have a tremendous influence on an organization's ability to innovate, but these practices are as individual as a fingerprint," Fischer said. While this study reveals that a common "tool kit" -- including e-mail, telephone, voicemail, postal mail, interoffice mail, fax, sticky notes, telephones, pagers and cellular phones -- is available to most workers, the use of these tools varies widely among individuals. Each worker adopts a unique set of messaging tools and strategies to help them manage their workflow and thinking.

Although the "invisible work" of learning to use tools and organizing tasks helps to fuel innovation, it is generally undervalued in the workplace. There's tension between visible work, which is perceived as value-producing, and invisible work, which is perceived as organizational. Workers believe invisible work is not valued by companies because the fruits of it, unlike the fruits of visible, value-producing work, are not reflected in their paychecks. Workers, therefore, have little incentive to take work time to learn new tools, explaining why the study showed that most tools and features are learned ad hoc and on an as-needed basis.

Messaging practices underpin the social networks that supply the raw material of innovation, the study notes. Workers learn tool features in the process of building social networks, and they build social networks in the process of learning tool features. This ongoing exchange builds social capital for both the individual and the company. As workers balance ongoing projects and priority-changing crises, they rely on their social capital/business networks, messaging tools and messaging practices to move all agendas ahead.

Key Takeaways for Individuals

-- Respect both your own natural work rhythm and that of your

        workgroup. Losing sync with the workgroup's communications
        culture inhibits your ability to innovate. Realize that
        conscious and unconscious messaging practices affect your
        ability to attain balance between core organizational tasks
        and innovative value creation activities.

    --  How do top performers stay organized and think at the same
        time and still reserve brainpower for important tasks? The
        answer is that they don't think of everything at once. Instead
        they use tools and people to segment, prioritize and schedule
        thinking as well as tasks, actively forgetting about the next
        project phase until it becomes an A-level priority.

    --  While a common messaging tool kit is available to most
        workers, individuals adopt highly personalized messaging
        strategies to manage workflow and thinking. This study
        revealed that self messaging, previewing and knowledge
        indexing are three commonly used practices by top performers.

    Key Takeaways for Companies

    --  Organizational attitudes about invisible work may need to
        change as companies see how invisible work actually
        contributes to innovation. Companies need to find ways to
        encourage workers to develop innovation infrastructure, using
        messaging practices to organize their work. If workers can't
        coordinate their thoughts and actions with larger goals and
        networks, they can't innovate.

    --  Customer focused innovation gets all the attention, but
        without internal innovation, companies -- online or offline --
        may not last long. Messaging infrastructure is a key
        contributor to innovation at all levels.

    --  While organizations cannot force innovation, they can create
        an environment in which it is likely to happen by encouraging
        the use of highly individualized messaging tools and by
        encouraging the kind of employee interactions that foster
        shared thought. The equation is simple -- messaging enables
        shared thought, which fuels innovation.

    About the Study

"Messaging for Innovation: Building the Innovation Infrastructure Through Messaging Practices" builds on four years of trend data compiled and examined by Pitney Bowes. This is the first and only study of its kind to examine the complete desktop messaging environment of knowledge workers -- how they use messaging tools to impact their productivity and organizational value. The fourth in a series of studies on Managing Communication in the 21st Century Workplace, the 2000 study was commissioned in partnership with The Institute for the Future -- an independent, nonprofit research firm --and drew on ethnographic interviews or observational interviews, as well as extensive telephone surveys. The research was conducted between January and March 2000 and consisted of interviews with workers at all organizational levels in small, medium, large and Fortune 1000 companies in Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and United States.

For more than 30 years, the Institute for the Future, based in Silicon Valley, California, has forecasted critical technological, demographic and business trends to help clients plan successfully for their future, including government groups, nonprofit organizations and major corporations throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

Pitney Bowes Inc. is a $4.4 billion global provider of informed mail and messaging management. It serves 118 countries through dealer and direct operations. For more information about the company, visit www.pitneybowes.com.

CONTACT: Cunningham Communication, Inc.

             Karen Fadden
             (617) 494-8202
             kfadden@cunningham.com
                 or
             Pitney Bowes Inc.
             Sheryl Battles, Exec. Dir., External Affairs
             (203) 351-6808
             battlesh@pb.com