There used to be time when collaboration was a smart business strategy only for advanced businesses and well-resourced companies that could afford the risks that came with it. Nowadays collaboration as a business strategy is the mainstay of an increasing number of enterprises across all industries. While good collaboration is known to increase innovation capacity, lead to increased profit and better competitiveness, a poor collaboration strategy can cost a lot. Investing in a collaboration strategy is investing in business growth. On a smaller scale, learning from others is the very least every business can do. With that in mind here is the latest edition of recommended reading on all things collaboration.

How to Prevent Your Sustainability Collaboration from Failing

More than ever before, companies are collaborating with stakeholders across their value chains, and even across entire regional or global governance systems, to learn about the systemic issues that curb long-term business growth—such as keystone species extinction, talent shortages, and climate-threatened supply chains—and agree on joint actions to address them.

There are numerous examples of successful and impactful multistakeholder collaborations for sustainable development: For instance, half a billion children have been vaccinated and more than nine million lives…READ ON

Microsoft Launches Free Teams for Collaboration, Slack Gets Better Search, More News

Microsoft has finally released its freemium version of Teams, its collaboration app which is widely seen as the company’s answer to Slack. The rumour mill has been working overtime about freemium Teams for months and while Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft refused to comment about it officially, there were too many “leaks” for the rumour not to be true. The question was what form it was going to take….READ ON

Could a Tech Collaboration Tool Fix Dysfunctional Governments?

Microsoft Inspire is taking place this week in Las Vegas, and a huge number of my personal friends and I were prebriefed on what the big announcements would be. Strangely, the embargo on the news lifted last week, so I’m not going to get in trouble for sharing some of the revelations.

There are a number of interesting elements, including Microsoft’s suddenly aggressive move to use Azure as an Internet of Things host, which suggests that in the future, many of our homes and businesses (at least their lights, HVAC and security) will be managed remotely in the Microsoft Cloud. Don’t get upset, as this is likely a ton better than what we are doing today…READ ON

When it comes to disclosing climate risk, collaboration is key

Taking immediate action, the G20 formulated the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) – to help business compile and organize the information needed to understand and address climate-related financial risk.

Just over a year ago, the TCFD released its final recommendations. Companies now have a clear framework to improve their climate-related financial disclosure. At WBCSD, we believe the Task Force will impact corporate governance around the world through these key recommendations….READ ON

Italdesign Collaborates on Nissan GT-R50 Concept

Fiftieth anniversaries are typically marked with a cake and candles. Yet when Nissan wanted to mark 50 years of its legendary GT-R flagship, it turned to Italian coach-building powerhouse Italdesign—also celebrating its own 50th this year—to create a 720 hp rolling sculpture it is calling the GT-R50.

This commemorative car is based on the most potent of GT-R models, the 600 hp, $175,000 NISMO Edition. To create the GT-R50, Nissan’s designers penned an entirely new body that’s longer, lower, and wider, yet still unmistakably a GT-R. It then invited Italdesign to build it….READ ON

Launceston business owners talk collaboration as a strategy

Drawing on combined experience and knowing who to ask for help are key principles that can be seen in practice at businesses in Launceston every day.

Using collaboration as a foundation, author, business strategist and yoga teacher Dr Polly McGee wrote about the benefits of working together in her book The Good Hustle.

“I define the good hustle as a business that has heart, which means it is set up to not only create revenue and be sustainable, but have a market it can interact with and has to be able to scale to a degree,” Dr McGee said.

“And ideally it does something that changes the lives of the people it…READ ON

New Study: Open Offices Kill Teamwork

Employees hate open office plans, but at least they help employees collaborate and work together? It saves companies money and it increases teamwork, right? Well, wrong.

Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban, at Harvard Business School and Harvard University, took a look at people who switched from individual cubicles to an open office plan. What they found wasn’t more collaboration after the switch but less. Participants in the study spent

73 percent less time in face-to-face interactions

67 percent more time on email

75 percent more time on instant messenger…READ ON

Harvard Study Reveals One Word Is the Secret to Being Likable and Emotionally Intelligent

As I’ve grown older and more experienced, the greatest of all lessons learned is how simple most things in life really are; and yet, how we try our darndest to complicate them. In part, I’m sure that’s because we feel complicating anything makes us more valuable.

Which is why coming across a recent Harvard study, described in an HBR article, impressed me. The research looked at the role of asking questions in interpersonal relationships. It found the simple act of asking questions is one of the most important aspects of trusted and open relationships, higher emotional intelligence, and learning….READ ON