The power of collaboration

Collaboration is one of the central issues when talking about what need to be done within an organisation in order to embrace learning, innovation and knowledge sharing.

The organisational structure should collaborate better (for example 'how to avoid departmental 'islands' in the organisation' or 'how IT-system should not be over-constained in order to retain control of an environment which should become evolutionary when thinking of using social computing tools").

In addition the organisational culture should also collaborate better. It is believed that innovation occurs when people are being exposed to a diversity of fragmented knowledge. However, organisations should promote a culture in which it is normal to share knowledge. There should be a willingness of everybody to connect, collaborate and share knowledge. And this is often a topic that is under-estimated in organisations. It is not only about introducing social media tools that ease the way people can connect. People should also have the cultural ability or knowledge to connect!

So, with a better collaborative ability, organisations become more innovative. One of the best example of such a collaborative project is the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee described in an article of the Scientific American the World Wide Web as:

The Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles.