This week’s ROADMENDER top 5 recommended articles reinforce the key message; collaboration is about better competition. Be it a large business or a start-up, collaboration is central. This is even more the case now as we realise that stalling tactics (aka, ‘collaboration washing’), as observed by old school management practitioners, can have detrimental results on business, its clients and staff alike.

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

Collaboration is the new competition

Beyond maximizing efficiency and impact of their data, these organizations have turned their internal software budgets, otherwise known as overhead costs, into another engine of the aid they provide to the world. Data aid. Over 4,000 governments, organizations, communities, and researchers in 59 countries use mWater to #mapWaSH for free. They have access to high quality, specialized software for water and sanitation monitoring that would otherwise be out of their budget without this model. They also have access to each other’s data that has been made public — making collaborations possible where competition would have been the norm…READ ON

Collaboration is the way forward for startups: CSIRO scientist

Startups need to collaborate more with big businesses and industries to provide testing grounds for new, innovative technologies, according to CSIRO Futures senior consultant Vivek Srinivasan. Srinivasan, who has been announced as one of the CSIRO’s seven brightest young scientists, says the organisation’s recent project exploring innovation in mining showed how startups and big businesses can work together. “We found exploratory developing helped in testing new ideas in unproven areas,” Srinivasan says. “The synergy that we saw with the big companies and the startup community was all about leveraging community to do quick short-term things to test out this technology that’s emerging.”…READ ON

Want Better Collaboration? Don’t be so Defensive

His talk was titled “Want Better Collaboration – don’t be so defensive”. It started with a discussion of research done on chickens and looked at the differences between collaborative and non-collaborative groups of chickens. In non-collaborative groups of chickens the star performers become the stars by suppressing the egg production of other chickens – they look better because they cause others to be less effective. He related that to many organisational environments and the behaviour of star performers in companies…READ ON

A Changing View of Collaboration

Workplace collaboration has evolved, and now includes a variety of technologies that allow employees to collaborate, engage and work together. The audio conference of yesteryear is being replaced with many different unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) tools that are increasingly shaping the workplace by creating efficient and effective communications solutions for global employees. Having the ability to effectively collaborate in the office is a must for employees, and employers play a large part in making that possible. An increasing amount of knowledge workers are working remote and telecommuting (a recent survey found 79 percent of working from home at least one day a week) which means that…RAED ON

First annual Global Collaboration Day hopes to connect every school

Mark your calendars — this September 17 schools around the world are going international for Global Collaboration Day, a first-of-its-kind event designed to raise awareness about the merits of participating in projects that cross borders. In addition to a handful of PD sessions for educators, there will be opportunities for mystery Skype calls, special Twitter chats, an international discussion conducted via WhatsApp, and a Q&A with a judge centered around the U.S. Constitution. (An updating calendar of events, arranged by time zone, is available online)…READ ON