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Collaborate or Perish – the new mantra February 14, 2008
The history of management shows that every decade or so comes along a new buzzword that threatens to transform every known paradigm and then slowly becomes just one more fad that fades away into the sunset or gets integrated into the normal processes of a firm. Management by Objectives, Total Quality Management , Business Process Reengineering are all examples of concepts that appeared truly transformational when they arrived and are now no longer seen as radical or revolutionary.
On a different plane, the progress of civilization through the years from the caveman era to the end of the last millennium had witnessed many ethnic and racial groupings leading to sometimes insular and divisive and in most cases emotionally or even physically segregated groups – the targeting of the Jews by the Third Reich and more recently the seething conflict between Shias and Sunnis are examples of such differences between two biologically similar but yet very different categories of the human race.
In the first few years of this century, what started as a small change has begun to assume a transformational form that can change the way human beings interact and collaborate on one hand and the practice of management on the other? The rapid spread of the Internet and the emergence of what is widely recognised as the new Web 2.0 version has spawned global communities integrated by common interests and causes which is moving from the earlier ‘browse and learn’ era to a truly collaborative work ethic. Wander into a cybercafé in virtually any part of the world and there would be at least one individual watching new video on Youtube, one referring to the Wikipedia, a contributory encyclopedia which in a short span has grown to ten times the size of the traditional Encyclopedia Britannica and yet one more making their life’s aspirations come true on Second Life – if you think this is Greek do ask a passing teenager!
Don Tapscott, author of ‘The Digital Economy’ in his latest book titled ‘Wikinomics’ comments that this new cornucopia of participation in the collaborative economy is a threat to the very existence of players who still hide behind the patenting of their first mover products and services and points out that ‘ordinary people and firms are linking up in imaginative new ways to drive innovation and success’. In recent years we have all heard of medical professionals putting out problems on the web to get best advice from practitioners from any corner of the world, but when you bring a researcher’s new option to the board room, the challenge of no organisation recipe being sacrosanct and every idea within the four walls of the firm being challenged by somebody sitting anonymously and providing collaborative suggestions to business problems is something that will have to be understood and embraced by all of us.
How soon will Indian firms explore the power of the community and think collaboration rather than containment – time will tell!
