In one of my many (more recent) ‘wanders’ through the internet I re-connected with a distant colleague from many years ago at Rotman. Seeing a new role he’d taken on, led me to his company website. I was hooked. And a deeper ‘cyberdig’ (love that term), reveled a good, rudimentary article on ‘how to start thinking about collaboration: 101‘ for companies. Entitled: “Ten Questions to Ask about Business Opportunities through Collaboration” (sorry you need to register), the writers document the necessary considerations of and planning for a roll-out of a collaborative strategy.

There were definitely a few: “Thank you! Someone else gets it too” moments… But the overall point? Collaboration is more than a strategic advantage, it’s a strategic imperative…

In summary, the paper introduces, what will likely become, a few new ’buzz words’ including: (i) ‘prosumer‘, the merger of consumer and producer to enable customer generated service/ products, (ii) ‘CEM‘ (Collaborative Enterprise Management), a management strategy to promote and enable collaboration, and (iii) ’prediction markets‘, an evolving virtual market for the trade/ purchase/ sale of future predictions on consumer and vendor behaviour and actions.

Also brought up, throughout the article, are some of the many benefits of collaboration, and thus arguments for managements design, implementation and support of collaboration. In no particular order, they can be summarised as:

1. greater innovation, by enabling the cross- pollination and interdependent development of ideas
   • consider the case of ‘post-it-notes‘ in that one departments failure was another success
2. direct and immediate feedback, and accordingly strategic market MI (management information)
3. customer generated/ controlled experience, minimising corporate resources while bettering end experience
   • consider Proctor & Gamble’s ‘Connect & Develop‘ programme, resulting in 50% external product development, saving $1B in R&D
4. establishment of ‘on-demand‘ talent, via leveraging a non- FTE resource pool and network
5. greater visibility to upstream/ downstream activities, thus understanding potential obstacles & opportunities
6. corporate assimilation & distribution of intellectual property, a well valued but hard to quantify (corporate) asset
7. generation of self- initiated and self- directed teams
   • consider the plethora of self- directed collaborative groups on such sites as LinkedIn and Facebook
   • key to remember importance of commonality
8. engagement at all levels of an organisation with corporate (& customer) strategy, and associated ownership

“When employees can provide input on important decisions… they feel empowered and become more engaged. The roles of managers will increasingly be to design and orchestrate systems that engage the participation of others.”

Sounds a little like another mantra: “Role of a good manager is, to put themselves out of a job.” Couldn’t agree more. Regardless, the importance of management in enabling collaboration cannot be overemphasised.

“… what it means to collaborate and the benefits of doing so are changing fundamentally.”

Few would argue the value of collaboration. Afterall, it has been occurring long before it became so prolific. Consider the rise of commodities, which has an intrinsic assumption that certain members of a community focus on development of a limited number of [community] needs, assuming other will focus on the remaining needs. Sounds collaborative to me.

But it [collaboration] must be implemented via a pull mentality. Collaboration is best achieved via intrinsic motivation. This is not to suggest extrinsic motivators cannot be used as a catalyst to collaboration, only that they should not be a sustaining agent.

“It [collaboration] can be catalyzed, but it can’t be mandated… It is a ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’ approach to achieving business results” ~ Tammy Erickson, nGenera Corporation Ltd.

A number of comments through the paper bare, in my opinion, particular attention, not just because I am in 100% agreement with them.

First, technology does not drive collaboration. It is only a medium to the achievementof collaboration. Without stakeholder engagement, ironically achieved through the collaborative design of… well a collaborative design culture and environment, and a reward & recognition structure to encourage collaboration, the best tools and technologies will not achieve collaboration.

Second, (positive) brand recognition is no longer enough to predict consumer purchase decisions. The wealth of information that is shared via collaborative mediums, specifically web 2.0 type technologies such as twitter and blogs, empower consumers with more informed expectations of vendor service levels. What a brand is known for, is no longer accepted as what it actually is. Some organisations have actually, cleverly, tapped into this trend and positioned themselves to provide as objective information on their service proposition as possible, even going so far as to publish competitor prices and service models.

Third, as organisations look to reach as close to a ‘fixed- cost- only‘ operating model as possible, by leveraging a flexible, on-demand talent pool, meaning lower costs during downturns, collaboration will give rise to this new operating model. Closely associated to this, will be the continual evolution of networks, across departments, organisations and geographies, regardless of where individuals may move. Thus individuals will not be confined by changes in organisational structures, and associated new peers, thereby maintaing and developing intellectual property and expertise.

Finally, collaboration is notthe same as working together in teams. Some people enjoy team working. Some don’t. But an individuals preferences for interaction is not the defining factor in whether they are collaborative or not. A certain set of criteria (trust, recognition, support, ease) are required to be in place, then collaboration will occur.

So, who else believes in this? Well, one historical figure does, and he was pretty successful…

“If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.”~ Issac  Newton