What Is Collaboration?

And yet, the need to collaborate on demand will only become more urgent as companies rely increasingly on specialized partners of all types to find the easiest route to their customers.

For me, that's one of the biggest takeaways from a new business tome co-authored by ex-McKinsey consultant John Hagel III and former Xerox PARC director and 2004 CRN Industry Hall of Fame inductee John Seely Brown. The book, titled "The Only Sustainable Edge," devotes a section to technology that can aid in the cause. And their examples may surprise you.

For one thing, the authors are more interested in informal communication and ideas generated through bulletin boards, via instant-messaging exchanges and on Web blogs than they are in formal procedural frameworks. (Seely Brown was actually instrumental in the development of Eureka, a tip-sharing system used by Xerox that combined the idea of ad hoc communication of best practices by Xerox field technicians with a formal review of information prior to posting it.)

Web blogs and bulletin boards allow experts to emerge who can help companies identify and navigate "exceptions," that is, situations in which a relationship dynamic has taken a turn that wasn't accounted for originally. Within these exceptions lie valuable opportunities for innovation, allowing companies to push forward more quickly into new products and services, the authors write.

Hagel and Seely Brown are also big on e-learning—something Cisco Systems, IBM and Microsoft are relying on more. They believe the key to effective e-learning systems is flexibility. These platforms shouldn't merely push knowledge out to students, they should facilitate debate and discussion. Moreover, they need to act on demand, enabling users to dip in to gather training materials they need at a particular moment in time. Forcing users to comply with rigid class schedules doesn't go far enough.

When you think about it, the best brainstorms aren't predictable. There is a certain order in chaos, and collaborative tools should accommodate.

How do you collaborate? HEATHER CLANCY, Editor at CRN, appreciates your feedback at [email protected].