Reflections on the Nature of Collaboration
by Shiv Singh
An often forgotten fact about collaboration is that the people who typically want to collaborate are also the ones who trust each other the most. They are also the people who recognize that they can benefit in some manner by collaborating. Those benefits usually extend beyond just learning from one another to also recognizing that their reputations get enhanced as more peers observe their ongoing collaborations. But these people aren’t always in the majority.
As we design and analyze Enterprise 2.0 solutions, many of us work with the assumption that people inherently want to collaborate and that they will given the appropriate tools and motivations. That’s not necessarily true. Some people are more prone towards collaboration - they are the ones that see the obvious benefits. But there are others too - people who don’t recognize the benefits (and in some cases there may not be any at all) and people who fear that the collaboration can limit their competitive advantages among their peers. In other cases, its also simply a matter of trust. People may not want to collaborate with each other because they don’t trust the other people to recognize their contributions and play fairly.
The next generation Enterprise 2.0 applications, won’t just make collaboration easy. They will need to focus on helping organizations to identify who are more naturally inclined to collaborate and who need to collaborate for their jobs. These future applications will give those people the right collaboration tools based on what they’re trying to do and with whom. They will also recognize that there’s a difference between providing sharing capability and allowing for collaborative production. The applications will also be designed with the assumption that not everyone needs to collaborate or should be pushed to collaborate. That’s a different mindset from today but a more practical, logical and desirable one. Hopefully, we will get to that place soon.
