The new media enable virtual collaboration among multicultural workgroups, but intercultural misunderstandings often complicate this cooperation. This raises the question of whether multicultural teams can match the effectiveness of monocultural teams, especially when their members communicate solely through media. Petra Köppel identifies the various forms of conflict and synergy in multicultural groups and compares them in virtual and face-to-face environments. Building on this, she develops a multicultural input-process-output model (MIPO model) that provides insights for the design and management of multicultural workgroups. In particular, the author emphasizes a nuanced and synergy-oriented breakdown of the cultural influence factor to overcome the overly simplistic and deficit-based approaches that have been prevalent so far.