Six weeks into our first Master Class on Why Crowdsourced Innovation?"After our basic articles on "crowdsourcing" and "open innovation", it is time for a closer written examination of the third essential crowdsourced innovation term: "virtual collaboration".
In the first paragraph, we would first like to take a fundamental look at a definition of "collaboration" before we go one step further and move on to the digitalized form, i.e. virtual or e-collaboration. Coming to e-collaboration.
Definition: collaboration vs. Cooperation
Collaboration is known in today's parlance as a specific type of cooperation. Often the term is used as a synonym for cooperation, which is not quite correct. It is true that both cooperation and collaboration denote forms of collaboration. However, upon closer examination, the two terms can be clearly distinguished from each other.
Cooperation is characterized by the achievement of a common result or a complementary goal by individuals or groups working separately on different parts of a task. Through the division of labor, problem solving can take place in parallel.
"Cooperative work accomplished by the division of labor among participants, as an activity where each person is responsible for a portion of the problem solving…" (Roschelle& Teasley, 1995)
Collaboration, on the other hand, refers to the joint processing of a task within a group. Through the interactive sharing and discussion of individual knowledge, a common understanding of the problem and its solution is constructed and the generation of entirely new collective knowledge is fostered. The problem processing takes place sequentially, i.e. one after the other and repeatedly for the optimization of the solution approach, iteratively.
""…collaboration is the process of shared creation: two or more individuals with complementary skills interacting to create a shared understanding that none had previously possessed or could have come to on their own." (Schrage, 1990, p. 40)
In reality, cooperation and collaboration rarely occur in their pure form. Often one finds a mixture of both concepts.
Graphic: Collaboration vs. Collaboration
To make the difference even clearer we have once again called on our graphic artists and this time we have this great illustration for you, which is meant to illustrate collaboration in contrast to cooperation:
Feel free to use this graphic – with a reference to innosabi – for your own purposes.
Virtual collaboration
The continuous digitalization of our everyday lives and our working environment now makes it possible to collaborate in a meaningful way, even when separated by space or time. Various technical solutions help a company's employees to network with each other or with their partners or customers and to communicate via so-called "e-collaboration". Collaboration platforms or social software to work together collaboratively.
To summarize, we define the term "virtual collaboration" or. "E-collaboration" as follows:
Virtual or e-collaboration is the technology-supported collaboration of project groups, employees, companies and their suppliers and partners that are separated in time or space in order to optimize the value chain.
The benefits of collaborative work
Successful virtual collaboration enables the generation of completely new, innovative problem-solving approaches by combining individual knowledge via digital platforms – and thus independent of space and time.
While pure cooperation merely adds up individual knowledge, collaboration offers results that are not simply the sum of individual, separate parts, but – as a multiplier, so to speak – produce completely new, additional knowledge.
"Virtual collaboration offers enormous potential for value generation that would otherwise be impossible or difficult to tap into." Matthias Roggendorfer, McKinsey
Given the growing complexity in numerous business areas, virtual collaborative approaches hold the best prerequisites for the development of solutions in interdisciplinary cooperation.
Collaborative online platforms offer a common basis of operation that enables the interactive further development of individual contributions into mature results and thus contributes to the optimization of the value creation chain.
Barriers to successful collaboration
In order for collaborative approaches to develop their full potential, it is important to keep in mind some collaboration hurdles that could jeopardize project success. The American scientist Morten T. Hansen speaks of four specific barriers in this context:
- The not-invented-here barrier: Many teams and departments shy away from outside influence, fearing exposure or bullying. The reluctance to cross hierarchical or status boundaries also plays a role in this type of compartmentalization and leads to a rejection of outside help.
- Hoarding barrier: While the "not-invented-here" barrier is directed against the acceptance of help, the hoarding (also "bunker mentality") barrier is about the fact that help is refused per se. This behavior can be attributed to a lack of time, but also to high competitive pressure, which causes individuals to hoard their knowledge to make themselves indispensable instead of sharing it.
- The Search Barrier: A lack of network, company size or information overload can be reasons for a search barrier. The information or contacts needed are hard to find, and targeted information gathering is tedious and slow.
- The Transfer Barrier: Knowledge is inherently implicit and often can only be transferred through a specific background, as well as a common language. Lack of frameworks like these, as well as weak relationships and lack of communication among them, significantly impede successful collaboration.
While the first two barriers are predominantly motivational factors, i.e. the willingness to accept or provide help ("want" dimension), barriers three and four primarily revolve around unfavorable conditions ("can" dimension).
The latter, i.e., share and transfer barriers, can be successfully overcome by promoting networks and contacts. One effective means is technological support. Corresponding collaborative software, such as our innosabi crowd technology, can be very helpful both in obtaining information within a company and in transferring external knowledge.
Conclusion
In the context of advancing digitization and the increasing speed of innovation processes, virtual collaboration has become an indispensable form of cooperation.
The aim is to go beyond simple cooperation, to bring together individual knowledge and, with the help of collaborative technology, to arrive at new insights and approaches in an iterative process.
Companies can benefit both from internal networking of their employees in a shared knowledge network, and from the integration of external parties, such as customers and partners, via open innovation and crowdsourcing platforms.