Recently in Collaboration Category

Back in June I started a collaborative relationship with a women who runs her own sales training firm. I was hoping to create a partnership wherein she would help me market and sell my emotional intelligence course and I would add value to her firm by adding to her current course offerings. I was hopeful and enthused.

The relationship ended recently, and not on the best terms.

What derailed us was that I gave her some feedback on her tone which I perceived to be as abrasive and demanding; bossy, rather than collaborative.

Now, of course I could say that what derailed us was that she didn't accept/receive feedback well, but I will take responsibility for what and how I communicated.

I am part of a brilliant trend and I feel happy.

Says BusinessWeek, in this article entitled "The Power of Us," I'm part of a....

...big, hairy, monstrous organism, that is. The nearly 1 billion people online worldwide -- along with their shared knowledge, social contacts, online reputations, computing power, and more -- are rapidly becoming a collective force of unprecedented power. For the first time in human history, mass cooperation across time and space is suddenly economical. "There's a fundamental shift in power happening," says Pierre M. Omidyar, founder and chairman of the online marketplace eBay Inc. (EBAY ) "Everywhere, people are getting together and, using the Internet, disrupting whatever activities they're involved in."

Mass cooperation across time and space? It touches me profoundly that I'm part of that. You see, Bloggers reveal their knowledge -- themselves -- all the time and it doesn't get more cooperative than that. I end up wanting to know more about what these people know about. I get hooked, and so do roughy 10 million other people.

And online reputation? I can tell you I feel bad when I act unbecoming to online customer service. (Maybe I don't sense cooperation?) But I feel good when I use paypal on Ebay and click on "donate" on Mozilla, for example. (Maybe I feel I'm giving, not paying?)

In any event, give people information and access to other people, and just step back and see what they do with it. We feel a network of brains synthesize information into knowledge, collaboration, experience and wisdom. We feel evolution happening. An evolution that depends on others.

Do you feel the Power of Us? I know I do. Bloggers provide me with a sort of continuous learning opportunity. They plug me in to what's going on, and that requires others. I depend on others in a profound way.

This isn't touchy-feely stuff. It transforms the economy.

How can a tiny European upstart like Skype Technologies S.A. do a number on a trillion-dollar industry? By dialing up a vast, hidden resource: its own users. Skype, the newest creation from the same folks whose popular file-sharing software Kazaa freaked out record execs, also lets people share their resources -- legally. When users fire up Skype, they automatically allow their spare computing power and Net connections to be borrowed by the Skype network, which uses that collective resource to route others' calls. The result: a self-sustaining phone system that requires no central capital investment -- just the willingness of its users to share. Says Skype CEO Niklas Zennström: "It's almost like an organism."

To be sure, there's still a lot of junk to wade through. Search engine have solved one giant problem (to locate the kowledge), but given us another giant problem (knowledge overload). What you need is more eyeballs. That comes from other people. In fact, this BusinessWeek link was provided by my personal knowledge consultant and collaborator. (Yes, they exist.)

How do you tap into the Power of Us? Organize your knowledge and stay connected, that's how. Everyone knows that knowledge is power, but Kpedia says: Organized Knowledge is Rocket Power.

Read what else Businessweek has to say about the Power of Us.

Thanks, Jennifer, for a great Top 10 About Collaboration.

Collaboration has been on my mind a lot too. In fact, I just finished watching a fascinating special on TV about Mileva Maric, first wife of Albert Einstein.

I learned that Albert Einstein and Mileva produced a schizophrenic son who was eventually responsible for Mileva's nervous breakdown, subsequent multiple strokes and death. And worse, Albert was a cheating bastard who gave his nobel peace prize money to Mileva in return for a divorce and left Mileva to care for their sick son for years by herself.

What captured my attention just as much was the apparent controversy over whether Einstein's paper on the theory of relativity was actually written -- and the idea collaborated on -- with Mileva. A scholar claims that an original Russian manuscript references the paper's authors as "Einstein-Maric," but some scholars vehemently argue against that notion. What's the controversy; what's so hard to comprehend? Collaboration happens.

It's not hard to imagine considering Maric was a physicist herself, and was partnered intimately and professionally (they wrote about five papers together) with arguably the greatest mind of the millennium...what a platform! Collaboration happens!

Later in the episode, a historian explains that there is a German saying that describes Mileva as an oyster and Einstein the pearl--the grain of sand needs the oyster to become a pearl, but then after it's a pearl, it doesn't need the oyster anymore.

But I think that it's not Einstein that's the pearl, but instead the theory of relativity itself. All three needed each other.

So, I see a metaphor: pearls as a symbol of collaboration. Out of two entities emerges a rare jewel, hard to describe, scientifically proven, cultured even. Luminescent, coveted, harvested. Worn, tested, meaningful. Connected.

Another topic my business partner (BA) and I (MM) agreed to blog about -- so we can better understand it -- is our collaborative process and how well it works. We are well on our way towards accomplishing what we set out to do (develop and implement a business plan) and have done it with intelligence, humor, playfulness, focus, creativity, discipline and with vision. How the hell did that happen!?