Competition through collaboration
Urban Agriculture And Politics Of Space: Potential for Collaboration
Urban agriculture as one of the oldest activities in human history, has experienced a renaissance in the past two decades. Predictions made only a decade ago that UA will become a global reality as much as global necessity have proved to be accurate. Those predictions are reflected in […]
What makes collaborating teams tick?
On the surface everyone is a collaborator, and every team is a collaborating team. That is the ‘sell’ in contemporary workplaces. Businesses invest in collaboration as a part of their business strategy for a variety of reasons; improving organisational culture, trust, productivity, competitiveness or even, more imaginatively, to […]
De-risking collaboration
While collaboration has often been praised and promoted as a cure all, endorsing it in this way borders on irresponsible. In business there are no easy, fail-safe ways of finding good business solutions to complex problems, designing winning strategies or delivering results that meet everyone’s expectations. The appeal […]
Reclaiming collaboration
It’s time to wrest the subtle art of collaboration from the jaws of everyday spin. The famous co-founder of once widely popular start-up WeWork claimed that the majority (70%) of those who paid to use the WeWork shared space collaborated. This always seemed like a possibility given that […]
Collaboration: newspeak, a euphemism or a real deal
We’re nearly at the 2-year mark since COVID 19 disrupted our universe. Businesses have learnt many lessons, and many have embraced new strategies such as collaboration, even with competitors. In fact, competitors tend to embrace collaboration with each other more often than is recognised. This is not surprising […]
Collaboration has always been risky
A recent global collaboration study of 476 organisations found that nearly 70% have used collaboration apps. Reliance on collaboration tools continues to increase as more companies use apps to support their business. With that shift in workplace practice, or rather, scaling up of an existing practice, comes an […]
Collaboration technology does not make one a good collaborator
The most influential photographers in the history of the medium (almost 200 years) created pictures, iconic pictures in fact, with cameras and technology that were well below the standard of cameras one can buy today. Nowadays, everyone can access cameras that are superior to, for example, that used […]
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Collaboration has a challenging problem: it’s appealing for simple tasks but not for strategic long-term goals. The net result is that we have a market for apps and digital tools that ‘facilitate’ collaboration and implicitly lead to all the good things that collaboration produces, including increased productivity, innovation […]
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The notion of collaboration as a competitive business strategy has been around for some time. In some sectors it works better than others, but the overall impact on high performing enterprises that look for every bit of advantage they can add to their competitiveness has been demonstrated many […]
How to Avoid a Collaboration Recession!
People in the contemporary workplace (read: high performing, highly motivated, competitive and resilient) expect to be given three things: meaningful work, appropriate reward and ample opportunities to collaborate. That last bit often gets neglected by executive decision makers, who in many instances ascended to those positions via old […]
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Every now and then collaboration can be frustrating. Invariably it gets people wondering if it is worth the effort and in particular if collaboration is really possible given that humans are prone to both competition and collaboration. How to reconcile the drivers? In my first book (The Collaboration […]
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From time to time businesses conduct strategic audits to ensure they are better aligned for growth or simply, and probably more often, they merely respond to disruption and challenges. Increasingly there is a focus on collaboration, or lack of it as is the most often the case. No […]
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The business world is interesting for a whole host of reasons. How businesses approach collaboration as a strategy is one of them. Why some businesses still struggle and remain unsure about collaboration as a business driver, while others enter into 10 year-long collaborations, is a bit of a […]
Collaboration: ‘over the counter’ style
There is no shortage of people who say they want to collaborate. Nor is there any shortage of people professing they know how to do it well. The slight problem is that a lot of collaboration talk is ‘over the counter’ grade quality. Collaboration is a genuine business […]
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The staying power of collaboration as a business strategy is a powerful reminder to business leaders that a truly competitive business can’t really ignore collaboration any more than it can its ICT, Marketing and Comms or HR strategies. Two very commonly observed factors that prevent some from embracing […]
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Silos are good for storing grain … or guided long-range missiles. They are expensive and valued structures that make sense if your primary concern is food safety or warfare. But when we build them in our workplace, they are nothing more than a major cost to business. There […]
Treat your clients like collaborators; you need each other
Clients are not what they used to be. While the idea of a client as someone who wants their needs met has not changed over decades or centuries, what has changed is how well clients understand their needs and, more importantly, communicate them. I recall a conversation with […]
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When we consider collaboration, productivity matters a lot. Whichever way we look at it there is no escaping the fact that poor, albeit well meaning, collaboration can be costly. This issue can be tackled but it does take one specific bent; understanding that collaboration is about smart strategy […]
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Business collaboration started off as a necessity for some industries. It slowly become a clever competitive strategy, then a norm. Businesses that get collaboration also get the fact that collaboration is not a real choice; sloppy collaboration is a cost no business can sustain. Some are learning this […]
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“Collaboration is good business”. So asserts Forbes’ contributor Erica Dhawan in “The Secret Weapon For Collaboration”; an article that is included this edition of recommended reading. That simple message is worth repeating as we know that collaboration thrives when the right culture is in place. And, as with […]
Rome wasn’t built in a day
The hype surrounding the start-up culture that has gripped western economies over the past decade or so has become a de facto yardstick for any kind of achievement. Essentially, one struggles to find enough people to understand that not all businesses should be built upon the start-up model; […]
When disruption disrupts itself
Every year various major business consulting firms or some such influencers issue a list of emerging jobs or jobs that will be future professions. Many are quite entertaining, for instance; Simplicity Expert, Robot Counsellor, Head Monster, Locationists, Privacy Manager and so on. In most cases they are not […]
Is Your Business Rigged To Avoid Collaboration?
On any given day, I am to likely hear an argument pointing to the challenges of collaboration. There are many. Some of the challenges are genuine and others tend rather to be excuses. A fairly straightforward analysis of any business that resists collaboration usually uncovers factors that point […]
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