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White paper by Shawn Callahan, Mark Schenk, and Nancy White, April 21, 2008 on Building a collaborative workplace "THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP Leadership is a keystone for establishing supportive collaboration cultures, especially in teams and communities. This is based on how leaders mainly embed their beliefs, values and assumptions in the fabric of their organisation. There are six main behaviours that leaders display that mould the organisation's culture.[3] What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis-are they paying attention to collaborative strategies and behaviours from team, community and network perspectives? How leaders react to critical incidents and organisational crises-are they sacrificing long-term goals for short-term fixes which sabotage collaboration? Does fear of connecting to the larger network keep them from tapping into it? How leaders allocate resources-are they investing in the collaboration capability? Is it attentive to all three types of collaboration? How leaders express their identity through deliberate role modelling, teaching, and coaching-as our leaders collaborate, so do we! How leaders allocate rewards and status-are your leaders rewarding individual or collaborative behaviours? Or both? How leaders recruit, select, promote, and excommunicate-are collaborative talents sought and nurtured?"

article by Annie Murphy Paul, July 19, 2013 about using the internet's facts and information in tandem with our own acquired knowledge--the facts--to then innovate, collaborate, & evaluate. Innovate requires us to know what became before. To collaborate, we just contribute knowledge to the join venture. To evaluate, we have to compare new information with knowledge we have already mastered.

a blog post by Maish Nichani with PebbleRoad, 12/21/2009 on collaboration. Because they work on developing the technology, they use examples of well-matched technology and developed collaboration cultures and one "idiot" poorly matched tech/culture example.

article by Joyce E. A. Russell, 10/28/2012, Capital Business, Wash Post on competitors collaborating.

blog post by Charles Jennings cited by Jane Hart, published August 13, 2014. "And for Organisational Learning? The Web has allowed us to totally redefine our traditional learning models. It has allowed us to reach beyond content-rich learning approaches and focus on experience-rich learning. It has allowed an evolution from 'Know What' learning to 'Know Who' and 'Know How' learning; and it has allowed the emergence from learning in the silos of our own organisations to learning with and through others across the world - easily and transparently. The Collaboration Age On a wider plane the Web has been the harbinger of the Collaboration Age. It has blown away many of the barriers to access and has reinforced the power and influence of collaboration and co-operation1 over silo mentalities. In the Collaboration Age it is those who share and work together who are the winners. Those who hide behind organisational garden walls end up deep in weeds. "

Ron Ashkenas, April 20, 2015, HBR distinguishes between cooperation and collaboration, but not in the way we have come to understand it online. In this case, cooperation is what some managers do when a larger collaboration is underway, but they aren't really committing to true end-to-end product development.

article by Ron Ashkenas on difference between cooperation and collaboration and how to set up and negotiate successful collaborations, April 20, 2015

post by Meghan M. Biro, July 28, 2013 on collaboration success. Excerpt: The fact is there is nothing more important to leadership and organizational success than collaboration. It exponentially increases the odds of amazing things happening. But it can be tough to achieve. Bringing people together and then igniting and nurturing a collaborative effort is a key test of leadership and workplace culture. Technology provides amazing tools to make this happen. It is nothing short of a game-changing community-builder. 1. Build an online infrastructure for social learning and networking 2. Set limits 3. Get it off your chest 4. Ignite inspiration 5. Be yourself

Very good, practical article by Marco Albani and Kimberly Henderson, McKinsey & Company, July 2014 on companies and social groups joining forces to protect the environment. The seven tips to make such alliances successful work for all partnerships/odd couples IMO. 1. ID clear reasons to collaborate. "The effort needs to help each partner organization achieve something significant. Incentives such as 'we'll do this for good publicity' or 'we don't want to be left out' are not sufficient." -Nigel Twose, director of the Development Impact Department, International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group 2. Find a fairy godmother "It is important to have a core of totally committed, knowledgeable people who would die in a ditch for what the organization is trying to achieve." -Environmental NGO campaign head 3. Set simple, credible goals 4. Get professional help "It is very important to have an honest broker. The facilitator must be neutral and very structured and keep people moving along at a brutal pace. You need someone who can bring things to a close." -Darrel Webber, secretary general, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) 5. Dedicate good people to the cause "If a company like ours believes something is strategic, then we resource it like it is strategic." -Neil Hawkins, corporate vice president of sustainability, Dow Chemical LOVE #5--HAVE SEEN "COLLABORATIONS" FAIL IN STATE GOVT. BECAUSE GOOD PEOPLE AND SENIOR LEADERSHIP WERE NOT BEHIND IT. 6. Be flexible in defining success "Partners think that collaboration will change the world. Then it doesn't, and they think that it failed. But often the collaboration changed something-the way some part of the system works and delivers outcomes. It is a matter of understanding the nature of change itself." -Simon Zadek, visiting fellow, Tsinghua School of Economics and Management, Beijing 7. Prepare to let go "I've been absent from the FSC since 1997.

blog post by Belinda Gannaway, NixonMcInnes, Creating Meaning in Business. 8 Ways to Spot a Collaborative Organization.

This article on Resource Link, September 21, 2011, captures the learning environments we wish to bring to businesses, nonprofits, and membership associations. "Social Media - what do you need to know? In the 21st century, learning networks are richer than ever before. Social media, including tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn allow connections with professionals to be developed in offline and online worlds in new and exciting ways. No longer are we limited geographically. Social media allows us to connect not only to those we know, but also to those who we don't know, but who share our passions, our interests and our profession. Despite never having met in the physical sense, it is now possible to share links, comment on educational research, debate, collaborate and create new knowledge with individuals no matter where they are working." Another excerpt: So….Social Media and Professional Learning Communities? What is the connection? A school which is a professional learning community focuses upon removing the walls between classrooms (metaphorically, in all cases, physically in some!), encouraging collaboration, dialogue, ready access to colleagues and an openness to challenge understandings and current 'accepted' knowledge. Excerpt: Roberts and Pruitt, in their book Schools as Professional Learning Communities (p3, 2009) quote research that suggests that the major obstacle for schools who wish to develop as learning communities is the provision of resources such as time to collaborate, leadership support, information and ready access to colleagues. Social Media is not the total answer; but in schools where money and time are in short demand (and which school isn't in this situation?), they can go part of the way in meeting these needs. 1. social media providing to time to collaborate 2. social media providing leadership support 3. social media providing information 4. social media providing access to colleagues

Edutopia blog on web tools to help students collaborate. Some fun principles for collaboration including: shut up and listen; action beats inaction; there are no mistakes. Worth viewing the old Carol Burnett show YouTube with Tim Conway.

Arthur T. Himmelman's Collaborating for a Change model with matrix and narrative, 26 page document, revised January 2002. Networking, coordinating, cooperating are three steps to reach collaborating, starting with most informal to the formal, institutionalized arrangements that characterize collaborations.

Emanuella Grinberg reports on Better By Design including offices, hospitals, etc. The office better by design is open spaces that boost creativity and collaboration. The workplaces of the future - and, in many cases, the present - will have fewer high-walled cubicles and private offices. "The good news? Innovative companies with commensurate budgets are creating offices that bring employees together in colorful communal workstations and collaboration areas, making "The Office" look like a monochrome vestige of a bygone era. And, designers are working with companies to maintain private spaces within open offices where employees can drill down on a report or take an important phone call beyond earshot of colleagues. It's part of the "alone but together" philosophy taking hold in office design, which attempts to balance employee collaboration with privacy in an era when personal space is shrinking,"

Good companion piece to the Genius is Dead NYTimes article

An interview by Kellye Whitney, 2013 for Talent Management Magazine with Evan Rosen on "Can Collaboration be Forced?" The short answer is no because that would only continue the command and control mindset and decision making that stifles collaboration. Instead design structures and processes that bring people together to partner and collaborate across disciplines, locations, etc. Uses example of BMW reducing development time needed for new car with workers in Germany/S. Carolina being matched up to work together to solve problems, design issues.

wonderful article on differences between networking, coordinating, cooperating, and collaborating drawn from work of Arthur Himmelman.  They add up:  exchange information, alter activities, share resources, enhance capacity for each player. 

blog post by Stephen Downes, April 12, 2010 on differences between collaboration and cooperation, group collaborates, network cooperates with much greater freedom for the individual

Home page for Collaborative Ways, Richard Schultz's and Eiwor Backelund's business on online collaboration.

interview with Rosabeth Moss Kanter, September 2012, Harvard Magazine on business ecosystems and how they thrive with connections between large and small businesses, education and business, turning ideas into enterprises, and cross-sector collaboration

In this blog Jarche combines his work, David Ronfeldt's work, Stephen Downes work, and Dee Hock's work to look at how work gets done in various traditional, and also new networked ways. Good diagram of collaboration and cooperation from Goal-oriented to opportunity-driven (serendipitous)

Clear blog on cooperation trumps collaboration in networked working and learning