A 2002 study by the Gartner Group indicated that more than 60% of professional American employees worked in teams characterized by virtuality, and by 2012, nearly 3.3 million American workers telecommuted for at least half of the time. Globally, an international survey of 254 senior-level executives revealed that staff in two thirds of their global firms were involved in distributed work.

Early research heralded virtual teams as a promising design for integrating firms and taking maximum advantage of innovation-creating capabilities.