Is it cooperation or is it collaboration? I understand cooperation to be humans working together as interchangeable components. They would work on a known task and have know roles I view collaboration at the edge with undefined problems. I have previously described the process of CNL. In the past project-based teamwork took two basic forms. Initially, the projects were co-located in the same organizational division and individuals were able to cooperate and share a task with one another. Later, another method of project teamwork started to emerge where project team members were brought together from different divisions, often via electronic networking, to work on a designated task. As Friedman (2005) explained, electronic globalization was flattening our world. Inter-national and national matrix organizations supported this type of cross-functional work. The cross-functional nature of this work was becoming more likely collaborative than cooperative. The team work was collaborative in the sense that the members from the different functional divisions applied their expertise to bear on the task. Individuals with different expertise were brought together. They were not interchangeable with other members of the project team. As the information age revolution continued there was an increase in various forms of cross-functional collaboration. And, the work of these cross-functional collaborative teams required that each member contributes to the common shared goal of the team. As Levy and Richard (2005) explained, the new work landscape was changing and so what the nature of job skills required.

Today and in the unpredictable future, teams will be facing novel task challenges and problems to solve. They will be working in areas where there are no shared, known algorithmic solutions. The team members will collaboratively learn together; and, at some point they will freeze their process to produce an artifact of their learning. The learning artifact will be their "product." The team members could be co-located but as the expertise and knowledge needed become more specialized the team members will most likely participate through networked technologies. In essence, the work of these teams is learning; and, the outcome of their learning is captured in an artifact to preserve and distribute the learning work. Recently I re-interated the ideas as it related to Massive Collobrative Networked Learning. See Massive Collaborative Networked Learning (MCNL) a model of working together in a Global Pandemic https://bit.ly/36onhp4