Seizing Advantage: How Tacit Assumptions Rob Traditionists and Innovators Collaboration and Social Business are powerful concept with huge potential but realizing this potential is far from business-as-usual. Both traditional business and social business evangelists must challenge their assumptions—and then doing something different. The rise of the social web now sets the context for business, cannot be ignored. Customers rely on it to make decisions and they have expectations of the companies with which they do business. Companies of all sizes have launched initiatives with a goal to foster greater co-operation, collaboration and more meaningful relationships inside their companies and with customers.
It is safe to say that the results are mixed. One of the deep-seated assumptions that undermine collaboration initiatives is the belief that people are motivated to act in their self-interest, especially for material rewards. Most traditional business executives do want the agility and engagement that collaboration promises. Sparking creativity in teams: An executive’s guide - McKinsey Quarterly - Strategy - Strategy in Practice. Although creativity is often considered a trait of the privileged few, any individual or team can become more creative—better able to generate the breakthroughs that stimulate growth and performance. In fact, our experience with hundreds of corporate teams, ranging from experienced C-level executives to entry-level customer service reps, suggests that companies can use relatively simple techniques to boost the creative output of employees at any level.
The key is to focus on perception, which leading neuroscientists, such as Emory University’s Gregory Berns, find is intrinsically linked to creativity in the human brain. To perceive things differently, Berns maintains, we must bombard our brains with things it has never encountered. This kind of novelty is vital because the brain has evolved for efficiency and routinely takes perceptual shortcuts to save energy; perceiving information in the usual way requires little of it. Immerse yourself Overcome orthodoxies What business are we in? MIT management professor Tom Malone on collective intelligence and the “genetic” structure of groups. Do groups have genetic structures? If so, can they be modified? Those are two central questions for Thomas Malone, a professor of management and an expert in organizational structure and group intelligence at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
In a talk this week at IBM’s Center for Social Software, Malone explained the insights he’s gained through his research and as the director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, which he launched in 2006 in part to determine how collective intelligence might be harnessed to tackle problems — climate change, poverty, crime — that are generally too complex to be solved by any one expert or group. In his talk, Malone discussed the “genetic” makeup of collective intelligence, teasing out the design differences between, as he put it, “individuals, collectively, and a collective of individuals.” The smart group And what they found is telling. So how do you engineer groups that can problem-solve effectively? Which, yay. The group genome. Getting Collaboration Right - Herminia Ibarra and Morten T. Hansen - The Conversation.
By Morten T. Hansen and Herminia Ibarra | 8:38 AM May 16, 2011 This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Making Collaboration Work. Cisco recently announced that it is trimming its elaborate structure of boards and councils — its collaboration machine. Although we don’t know the precise reasons for the changes, it is clear that the setup was viewed by some commentators as unwieldy and insufficiently results-oriented. Cisco’s efforts underscore the key challenge of collaboration — how hard it is to get it right.
Under-collaboration. Over-collaboration. As with BP at one point, perhaps Cisco over-collaborated and thus needs to pull back? Both traps are equally perilous: under-collaboration leads to underperformance relative to a company’s resources, and over-collaboration undermines speed and execution, also leading to poor results. So what’s the right way? Leaders play a crucial role in getting this right. The stakes are high: it will be crucial for leaders to get collaboration right. Six Common Misperceptions about Teamwork - J. Richard Hackman - The Conversation. This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Making Collaboration Work.
Teamwork and collaboration are critical to mission achievement in any organization that has to respond quickly to changing circumstances. My research in the U.S. intelligence community has not only affirmed that idea but also surfaced a number of mistaken beliefs about teamwork that can sidetrack productive collaboration. Here are six of them. Misperception #1: Harmony helps. Actually: Quite the opposite, research shows. Misperception #2: It’s good to mix it up. Actually: The longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. Misperception #3: Bigger is better. Actually: Excessive size is one of the most common–and also one of the worst–impediments to effective collaboration. Misperception #4: Face-to-face interaction is passé. Actually: Teams working remotely are at a considerable disadvantage. Misperception #5: It all depends on the leader. Misperception #6: Teamwork is magical. J. Winning, Losing, and Collaboration - Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer - HBS Faculty.
Why a Great Individual Is Better Than a Good Team - Jeff Stibel. Social networking 'utopia' isn't coming. The number of Twitter users last month surpassed 300 million. Study shows "tribalism" is alive and well in the social network eraScientists estimate users can have 150 Twitter connections before being overwhelmediPhone photo sharing app, Path, limits your network to just 50 people Editor's note: Chris Taylor is San Francisco bureau chief of Mashable, a popular tech news blog and a CNN.com content partner.
(CNN) -- As 2011 dawned, Facebook released a map that spoke to our era of social media in much the same way the first pictures of Earth from space spoke to the 1960s. The map showed the connections between the world's Facebook friends -- a number now approaching 700 million -- as beams of light. Gossamer-thin threads linked every major city on the planet. The cities shone like stars. No one has done this, but just think what that map would look like if you were to add Twitter users, whose numbers last month surpassed 300 million. Not so fast, man. The answer, on average, was roughly 150. Dave deBronkart: Meet e-Patient Dave.