Last week I worked on a co-authored paper describing the value of collaboration in the learning industry in New Brunswick. After completing my draft of the paper, I came across this comprehensive paper by the Institute for the Future. I found it through a reference via Jon Husband that led to this post and reference on The Happy Tutor. The latter is not quite what some people would consider family reading.
The paper, from June 2004 (852 kb PDF), is entitled Toward a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business. It’s a deep link that you cannot find from the main website, and I’m not sure if this was intended or not. The authors are Andrea Saveri, Howard Rheingold, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, and Kathi Vian. The questions posed are:
- How can new insights about the dynamics of cooperation help us identify new and lucrative models for organizing production and wealth creation that leverage win-win dynamics?
- How can organizations enhance their creativity and grow potential innovation with cooperation-based strategic models?
The paper then goes on to discuss seven lenses, from diverse fields such as mathematics, biology, sociology, technology, law and economics, psychology, and political science, through which to view cooperation and collective behaviour. The seven lenses are: synchrony, symbiosis, group selection, catalysis, commons, collective action, and collective intelligence.
This paper does not claim to be a definitive work but it is a neat synthesis of work in many fields that may lead us to a better understanding of how cooperation may be the best strategy for economic growth and prosperity. It also puts many other ideas into perspective – such as Reed’s Law which I’ve previously discussed (see the map on page 5).
There is a lot to review, or read for the first time. The last section is probably the most interesting for those trying to develop a new business strategy.
When we look across these opportunities and think of some of the fundamental dilemmas that businesses face, we find five key areas of potential innovation and disruption to business as usual.
Knowledge-generating collectives
Adaptive resource management
Collective readiness and response
Sustainable business organisms
Peer-to-peer politics
The authors then go on to describe the implications of recent innovations in each of these areas.
Overall, this is a great read.
