Collaboration

Collaboration

This is a way that people and organisations can come together to provide all the resources required for a task and also their application (or applications).

It is particularly important for innovative research as the direction of the task and the applications are likely to be unknown and varied. 

Hence it is especially important to facilitate it and support it and to develop networks of collaborators. This will make research both easier and more effective; it needs resources of all sorts --- funders, suppliers (of technologiy) and customers for using the innovative research (i.e. innovators in whatever fields).

Identifying innovators (and making them aware that they are) is a key issue for successful collaboration and innovative collaboration.

The collaboration wikihas a definition of .....

"Collaboration is working with each other to do a task.[1] It is a recursive[2] process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, (this is more than the intersection of common goals seen in co-operative ventures, but a deep, collective, determination to reach an identical objective[by whom?][original research?]) — for example, an intriguing[improper synthesis?] endeavor[3][4] that is creative in nature[5]—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group.[6] In particular, teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources.[7] Collaboration is also present in opposing goals exhibiting the notion of adversarial collaboration, though this is not a common case for using the word."

And the collaborative software wiki says....

"The use of collaborative software in the workspace creates a collaborative working environment (CWE). A collaborative working environment supports people in both their individual and cooperative work thus giving birth to a new class of professionals, e-professionals, who can work together irrespective of their geographical location.

Finally collaborative software relates to the notion of collaborative work systems which are conceived as any form of human organization that emerges any time that collaboration takes place, whether it is formal or informal, intentional or unintentional."

And Collaborative innovation network wiki....

"  A Collaborative Innovation Network, or CoIN, is a social construct used to describe innovative teams.... It has been defined ... as "a cyberteam of self-motivated people with a collective vision, enabled by the Web to collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information, and work." "