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"In this on-going collaboration debate, too many people view collaboration as a solution to a problem. It is not. Collaboration is the behaviour that emerges in contexts that invite for collaboration."

After 15+ years of deploying more and more tools, we need to ask ourselves - why haven't organizations realized the level of breakthrough collaboration necessary for them to excel - or in some cases, survive? It's not that the industry has not had any "wins" with collaboration strategies but success always seems to be stubbornly limited to certain groups or business units. Improving collaboration, it seems, has become an "intractable opportunity.

Internal collaboration is almost universally viewed as good for an organization. Leaders routinely challenge employees to tear down silos, transcend boundaries, and work together in cross-unit teams. And although such initiatives often meet with resistance because they place an extra burden on individuals, the potential benefits of collaboration are significant: innovative cross-unit product development, increased sales through cross-selling, the transfer of best practices that reduce costs.

Collaboration is one of those words that everybody loves and uses. At many companies, at least until the recession hit, collaboration was a mark of progressivity.

"This isn't a "shock & awe" title to merely draw you in. This also isn't a blanket claim from an "expert" who has never been in the trenches that "social business is dead". Enterprise 2.0 (aka social business) is not dead. Significant progress continues to be made. More and more enterprises have social business strategies and efforts for both marketing & internal collaboration. However, enterprises with several years of Enterprise 2.0 efforts under their belt have failed to reach the tipping point and cross into mainstream adoption of social collaboration . Coincidentally, Dion Hinchcliffe recently noted in The Path to Co-Creating a Social Business, the existence of the fissure with older collaborative channels on one side and the option to voluntarily engage socially on the other. I believe this is a sign post that we must pay attention to and make adjustments or social business could fall deeply into the rabbit hole where knowledge management (KM) efforts of past, already reside. "

In the social enterprise debate, we always talk about collaboration, about connecting individuals. However, connecting more people as such should not be an objective. The thing that really matters is connecting the right people, which implies disconnecting from the wrong ones.

Business colonies as temporary collaboration structures in order to deliver a given project. The concept seems simple enough. However, is it really that simple?

Collaboration is the mantra of the Enterprise 2.0 movement, but organisational boundaries complicate adoption and progress. Therefore, we need someone who takes a holistic view of what is needed to get employees to work across silos. Good idea?

Recent evolutions in our understanding of physics and biology indicate that our environment, including ourselves, is the result of a far-reaching process of interaction and complementarity. Apparently, something makes that matter and organisms -automatically- collaborate growing to larger and more complex entities. Is there a place for business in the universe?

As high-tech supply chains increase in complexity, they become harder to manage. Collaboration between OEMs, suppliers, and retailers is the answer.

Formalizing a company's ad hoc peer groups can spur collaboration and unlock value.

Over the last year, I've been doing a lot of research on how organizations will need to evolve to meet the demands of the 21st century. The central premise of this work is that new technologies, most of which have appeared only within the last decade, greatly amplify our abilities to interact simultaneously with large numbers of people. The frontier of human productive capacity today is the power of extended collaboration - the ability to work together beyond the scope of small groups.

Why wouldn't every organization flock to the vision of an agile, transparent, people-centered, and collaborative team? Let's count the reasons.

Gartner research analysts recently convened to discuss the changing nature of work and table some predictions for the coming decade. Their consensus view was that chaotic, distributed and ad-hoc teams of people, along with blurred organizational boundaries, would become the norm for most modes of work.

Over the past years, better and more cost effective communication capabilities have been the main drivers for evolutions such as internationalisation, globalisation and outsourcing. Indeed, this improved communication capability has been an enabler for various new and more complex forms of collaboration. At the same time, organisational structures are growing thinner. Is there still room for the traditional company?

The goal of the Virtual Company Project is to build online tools to help groups create and implement governance rules necessary for successful collaboration. The project is premised on the belief that the right graphical interfaces can translate the structures of the group into clear and intelligible procedures that will enable teams to make decisions, control assets and enter into contractual relationships with third parties. The Virtual Company project is creating the interfaces and designing the back-end functionality that is needed to enable group participants to see themselves in relation to the group as a whole, allocate roles, establish accountability to the group, make collective decisions, and administer group assets, expenditures and distributions.

A former Harvard Business School professor says companies must commit to 'I-space' and collaboration, not financialization and administration

More than ever, Enterprise 2.0 is the talk of the town. However, the discussion remains difficult due to a continuing bias towards tools and technology. Therefore, an attempt for a real look at the internals of Enterprise 2.0, the dark forces of collaboration.

The latest data emerging on how enterprises are using Web 2.0 tools in the workplace this year is painting a picture of a sea change in the way those businesses conduct collaboration and communication amongst their workers, and to a lesser extent the rest of the world.

We give a lot of talks and presentations about the ways and places companies and their employees learn the fastest. We call these learning environments creation spaces - places where individuals and teams interact and collaborate within a broader learning ecology so that performance accelerates.