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 […]
Joining forces with your fiercest competitor
While not a new idea, competitor collaboration has become one of the central tenets of business strategy. The thinking behind this is twofold; businesses must consider expanding their circle of potential collaborating partners by joining forces with their biggest competitors, and, even if a business remains committed to […]
What to Do When Your Collaboration Textbook Doesn’t Have All the Answers
There is an abundance of excellent advice about the way collaboration can work, both internally and externally, and which can genuinely make a noticeable difference to any enterprise that appreciates the positive impact of collaboration. For the past couple of decades, collaboration has been researched and applied with […]
Why ‘talent walks’ and how workplace collaboration can change that
Unhappy staff leave their employers. The more talented your employee is, the more likely they will migrate to your competition if they are not fully engaged at work. Talent loss is a serious risk to business. Now, there are many strategies that can mitigate that risk. Sometimes they […]
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Start any conversation on business collaboration and pretty soon it will generate a common question; can competitors collaborate. My own consultancy is based on a firm conviction rooted in firsthand experience that the answer is affirmative. Going a step further, competitors soon realise their competitive edge gets blunt […]
Unlocking the Key to Collaboration
Dr Britt Andreatta, former Chief Learning Officer for LinkedIn Learning (previously Lynda.com) and consultant to Fortune 500 companies considers collaboration to be an essential skill. In her book Wired To Connect, Dr Andreatta argues that “Collaboration is a vital necessity for the success of today’s organisation and yet […]
When ‘good enough’ is not enough
Collaboration, like virtually every aspect of business strategy and performance, has elements that are deceptively simple. In the case of everyday collaboration, what often remains completely unobserved is the fact that simple, transactional engagement and information sharing between parties does not lead to the best that collaboration offers […]
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A collaborative culture in any enterprise allows for the mediated design of a trusted environment (or at the very least, trust-building environment). Collaboration in any organisation allows for creation of a culture which offers employees the ability to create new meaning which is an essential form of motivation […]
Collaboration in the ‘century of complexity’
Listen to this article (5 mins) “I think the next century will be the century of complexity.” That was the response Stephen Hawking gave to a journalist at the dawn of this century in January 2000. One fifth of the century in and we have seen plenty of […]
5 Tricky Collaboration Problems and How To Fix Them
A recent business survey found that businesses which merely manage to survive tend to be stuck in going it alone, while those that are highly collaborative are more likely to see revenue growth. Increasingly, businesses are clear on the role of collaboration as a strategy of growth through […]
Psychoanalysing collaboration
[5 minute read] Technology that enables people to work together is essential. And the more intuitively it is designed, the more effective it is. There is seemingly an exponential proliferation of tools that are branded ‘collaboration’ which promise a world of benefits. COVID-19 has also played an additional […]
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2018 saw collaboration as a business strategy march towards mainstream practice. The proliferation of new research and material on the subject of collaboration is a clear indication that the value of good collaboration is a major ingredient of a sustainable and resilient business. This latest selection of recommended […]
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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 […]
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Collaboration as a strategic approach to creating value is winning. People are increasingly relying on a collaborative way of working; be it within a business or between businesses across industries. This doesn’t mean that the work of promoting the practice and approach to collaboration should stop though. As […]
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Edwin Land, the famous inventor and personal idol of the late Steve Jobs, remarked that ‘politeness is the poison of collaboration’. That is another way of saying that when people collaborate by ‘going along to get along’ they end up missing the whole point of collaboration. That’s not […]
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 growing need for collaboration is expanding the attitude of smart businesses which recognise one simple fact: collaboration is a strategy that can be crafted to work well. Good business solves problems. Complex problems call for collaboration, which invariably adds value to sustainable business. Undertaking collaboration successfully requires […]
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