In a constantly and rapidly changing business environment,organizations increasingly look to collaborative work processes to stimulate practices that will generate market value and gain competitive advantage. But while everyone seems to agree that collaboration is a good thing, business leaders and consultants often have differing ideas on what collaboration is and how—or even if—it can be managed and supported.

In fact, “collaboration… is a word with fuzzy but modern overtones. Collaboration suggests something more intense than coordination and less all-inclusive than community. Collaboration is sometimes used interchangeably with cooperation, although it suggests both a deeper level of involvement with others as well as some creative output, whether that be a product,a process, or an ongoing discussion.”¹

The elusiveness of collaboration certainly hasn’t diminished its perceived importance, however. In a recent survey of 1,656 executives from 100 countries,a majority said that it is vital to the future of their organizations. The survey results found that “increased collaboration will be a defining feature of the company of 2020. Executives expect to see a lot more collaborative problem-solving inside and outside their firms, and clear majorities intend to create employee incentives to encourage collaboration across functions (79 percent) and with external stakeholders (68 percent).”²

If collaboration is so vital, what is the recent thinking about the structure and value of collaborative practices? And how can organizations use their physical facilities to encourage and support those practices?

Collaboration = Knowledge Sharing

Stephen Kosslyn, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, has noted that “people often grapple with problems in groups, be they formally designated teams or casual huddles around the water cooler. Just as a mechanical calculator can extend our mental capacities, other people help us extend our intelligence—both in a cognitive sense (as required to solve problems) and in an emotional sense (as required to detect and respond appropriately to emotions, ours, and those of others).” In this way, he explains, other people can serve as extensions of our own brains, filling in for our individual cognitive and emotional limitations. He believes that as researchers come to understand how collaborative groups arise and operate, they will learn how to increase human intelligence.³

This understanding of collaboration as a means of sharing knowledge and extending human capabilities represents a new focus for the study and development of work groups within the organization. Where the emphasis had been on teams—operational teams, project teams, cross-functional teams—as a means of accomplishing specific tasks and goals, viewing collaboration as a means of managing knowledge gives group interaction a deeper, more pervasive role in the organization. Individuals working together to create, share, and use knowledge are seen as essential to the effective real-time development and implementation of strategies that form the basis of organizational success. Collaboration has become
a survival skill.

As a recent report by the New Paradigm Learning Corporation, a research and consulting firm, notes,“The exchange of knowledge among individuals or teams leads to innovation and the generation of new capabilities. And as the market evolves at increasing speed, competitive advantage will come from building capabilities faster than others.” The report goes on to emphasize that collaboration can no longer be viewed as a progressive management tool to be employed by certain types of corporations with “open” cultures, but a practice that must be embraced by any organization hoping to survive and succeed in today’s business environment. “Real collaboration is hard work. But there is no avoiding it: Businesses that embrace collaborative networks of knowledge exchange—via the right technologies,processes, and culture—will be able to build capability at a pace that will keep them competitive.”⁴