It is really satisfying to hear that employees are increasingly reporting how management is turning to collaboration as a critical strategy in addressing productivity, innovation, job satisfaction, growth and the bottom line, amongst a host of other things. As many of you would know, technological factors are vital in making collaboration easier, but it is precisely that smart strategy and culture of the workplace that is the winner. In preparing this week’s selection, it again was very apparent that collaboration is really making a difference to businesses large and small, startups, nonprofits, governments, universities and anyone who’s mindful that being relevant is a ‘must have’ in a disruptive world.

Sincere thanks to those who have suggested articles for this edition of Roadmender Recommends.

Learning to collaborate is important

The votes are in and after millions of dollars have been spent, much rhetoric and countless campaign ads, it is now time to move forward as a country. I believe that the only way we can successfully do that is if we learn how to work together. It remains to be seen if the two political parties in Washington, D.C., will be able to get anything accomplished over the next two years. However, collaboration is not just an option, it is a necessity in all areas of life. The problem with collaboration is that oftentimes we do not know how to do it…READ ON

Slack, a Start-Up With an App to Foster Business Collaboration, Is Valued at $1.1 Billion

How does a ho-hum idea for an enterprise company become one of the buzziest new start-ups to hit Silicon Valley? Ask Stewart Butterfield: serial entrepreneur, co-founder of Flickr, failed online role-playing game maker and now, chief executive of Slack, a communications start-up valued at more than $1 billion. For a start-up like Mr. Butterfield’s, reaching that valuation in such a short time is unheard of. Slack, which offers a chat-room-like product for businesses to use as an internal communication tool, was introduced publicly only eight months ago. It is focused on the enterprise, which means it sells its products primarily to businesses, rather than individual consumers…READ ON

Talk Isn’t Cheap As Investors Pour Cash Into Collaboration And Intelligence Tools

Investors and innovators have been trying to develop better tools for groups to communicate, collaborate, and make decisions for decades. Since businesses have become increasingly global and engage more remote workers, the need for collaboration tools is even more pronounced. And while hundreds of millions have been spent on technology, investors still think that there’s more work to be done. Friday saw the confirmation of a new $120 million investment in the collaboration software developer Slack. That investment values Slack at over $1 billion, making it the latest enterprise facing software startup to become a unicorn…READ ON

The Geniuses Behind All Those San Francisco Startups? They’re Not Who You Think They Are

Since around the time of Facebook’s IPO in 2012, but most intensely following the social media behemoth’s multi-billion-dollar acquisitions of WhatsApp and Oculus VR earlier this year, San Francisco has thrummed—and occasionally shuddered—with startup fever. Everywhere you go, the conversations you overhear are about runways and burn rates; Uber and Lyft drivers unspool elevator pitches at their passengers; and if you’re so inclined, you can eat as many locally sourced mini grilled cheeses and drink small batch spirits for free any night of the week at an ill-advised, lavish launch event for this week’s hot crowdsourced-dry-cleaning-social-curation-dating app…READ ON

Dolce & Gabbana Celebrates 10-Year Collaboration With Italian Soccer Team

AC Milan players pose in their new Dolce & Gabbana uniforms (Photo Credits: Dolce & Gabbana)

It was love at first sight between Dolce & Gabbana and Italian Serie A soccer team TISI +0.52% AC Milan, ever since the start of their collaboration in 2004. The Italian designer duo made up by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, has designed everything from team jerseys, to formal suits for the Italian athletes. A novelty in honour of this 10-year anniversay, is the Sicilia fit, which is part of the newly designed suits. That is, the previously thin lapel that used to define AC Milan its former Martini suit, has now been replaced by a wider, peak lapel model…

Why Higher Education Should Not Compromise About Collaboration

When I first began working with universities to develop project management solutions I was stunned. Given that the internet is full of collaboration-friendly tools, indeed the internet itself might be considered one, I assumed it should be easy to find a perfect fit for any organization. It’s not. In fact, mature options reflect extremely narrow business or consumer use cases…READ ON

Collaboration builds quality content

Love it or hate it, social media is here to stay, so remaining agile and willing to respond to the ever-changing landscape while maintaining a culture that supports quality content can mean survival in the digital world. About the only thing you can count on in the constantly shifting landscape of social media is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Keeping up is crucial. While the popularity of specific social channels like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus or Tumblr might decline, one thing that remains constant is consumers’ appetite for quality content. As a travel professional, your ability to use social media tools to help grow your business is contingent upon being able to create or acquire such content…

…and now for something completely different…

Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors

A team of Japanese and German researchers have carried out the largest-ever simulation of neural activity in the human brain, and the numbers are both amazing and humbling. The hardware necessary to simulate the activity of 1.73 billion nerve cells connected by 10.4 trillion synapses (just 1 percent of a brain’s total neural network) for 1 biological second: 82,944 processors on the K supercomputer and 1 petabyte of memory (24 bytes per synapse). That 1 second of biological time took 40 minutes, on one of the world’s most-powerful systems, to compute…READ ON