Boeing's new digital-design infrastructure also alerted engineers when design conflicts created "interferences." For example, if the avionics team and the hydraulics team developed systems that competed for the same physical space -- for areas of the plane that Boeing called "volumes" -- in the digital simulation of the 777, then the Boeing-developed software would send each group an email about the conflict. That way, the two teams could settle the issue before proceeding with the design prototype of the plane. Boeing recognized that integration needed to extend beyond computer-aided design to include computer-enabled communications.

So far, so good: Technology solves integration problems in the prototyping process. But, according to some reports, engineers on the 777 design-build teams deliberately introduced conflicts with other systems into their proposed designs. Sabotage? An unsubtle rebellion against the new technology? Engineering humor? A fundamental abuse of the prototyping medium?

No. Although Boeing officially acknowledges only that interferences naturally evolved, according to at least one mechanical engineer, some of those interferences were intentional. Why? So that engineers in one part of Boeing could use the interference to find the people in other parts of the company with whom they needed to discuss future design issues. The CATIA-enabled network -- which was originally created to give Boeing's engineers and suppliers the ability to build a digital prototype suitable for manufacture -- was also helping to promote communication and collaboration throughout the organization. In other words, the software's ability to notify appropriate parties about interferences became, at least in some instances, a tool to forge interactions between various groups within Boeing.

The resulting conversations and negotiations resolved design conflicts before more serious problems could emerge. Instead of meeting only to settle difficult engineering disputes, people were meeting in a less threatening, more exploratory context about these anticipatory interferences. Instead of defusing conflicts after the fact, savvy managers used the CATIA technology to prevent problems from developing in the first place. The prototyping medium generated a new genre of interaction between previously isolated disciplines and transcended Boeing's traditional organizational "silos."

The Moral: New prototyping media can spur conversations between people to create new value -- sometimes even by chance.

The Question: Do your prototyping and simulation processes create new opportunities not only for formal information management but also for informal interaction?

Sidebar: New Rules for Project Wow

We asked Tom Peters to come up with his short list of essential guidelines to make every project a Wow Project. Here are seven rules that apply to every element of work in the project economy -- from fast prototyping to the Art of the Wow.

1. Never accept an assignment as given. That's someone else's way of conceptualizing the project! Your first step should always be to question a project -- to challenge it, to reshape it, to remold it into something that you can call your own. Make it into something that you're sure will pass the "Is it worth doing?" test.

2. Every project always consists of both tangibles and intangibles. Like a DNA strand, a project is a double helix. One strand is made up of tangibles: the timetable, the deliverables, the measurables. The other strand is made up of intangibles: the emotions, the experience, the learning. Everyone focuses on the tangibles, but the intangibles are what matter.

3. Embrace the confusion. Here's what you need to be able to say about your project when you're halfway into it: "When we launched this project, we thought we knew what we were doing. Now we know that we don't know what we're doing -- but the things that we're confused about are much more important."

4. Create your own professional-services firm. No matter where you work or what your function may be, you need to create your own network of cool people. Collect your own set of freaks and geniuses. Build your own firm-within-a-firm.

5. It isn't worth doing if nobody gets mad. One good measure of a Wow Project: How many people are pissed off at you?

6. Think rainbow. If you pull together a project team, and everyone on it is a white male over age 50, something is wrong! Try the Statue of Liberty approach: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!"

7. Project management is emotion management. The hardest part of any project is handling the emotional roller-coaster ride that comes with it. Every Wow Project starts on emotions and runs on emotions. Be prepared for the emotional shifts that all projects undergo, and avoid emotional whiplash that will come when your project goes around sharp corners.

Michael Schrage (schrage@media.mit.edu) is a research associate at MIT's Media Lab and a Merrill Lynch Forum Innovation Fellow.

Adapted from "Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate," by Michael D. Schrage. Printed by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Copyright ©1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. Available in December 1999.